False Morel
Can killGyromitra esculenta · also called brain mushroom, beefsteak morel
False morels contain gyromitrin, which the body converts to a compound chemically related to rocket fuel and which damages the liver. They are eaten traditionally in parts of Scandinavia and Eastern Europe after careful repeated boiling with ventilation, and people are still poisoned doing exactly that — the volatile toxin has caused illness in cooks who merely inhaled the steam.
Read this before anything else
- Never eat a wild mushroom identified by a website or an app.That includes this one. These tools narrow possibilities; they cannot see your mushroom, its base, its smell or its habitat, and the difference between a meal and a liver transplant is sometimes a feature buried in the soil.
- Get it confirmed in person by an experienced local forager or a mycological society. Most regions have one, most run free identification sessions, and they will look at the actual specimen.
- Dig, do not pull. The cup at the base of a death cap is often underground. Pulling the mushroom leaves the most important feature in the soil.
- If someone has eaten a wild mushroom and feels unwell, call poison control now — in the US, 1-800-222-1222. Do not wait for symptoms to worsen. Amatoxin poisoning has a false recovery phase, and delayed treatment is what makes it fatal. Save any uneaten pieces for identification.
Quick facts
- If eaten
- Potentially deadly. Gyromitrin causes vomiting, liver damage and in serious cases death. Toxin content varies unpredictably by region and individual, so a preparation that has worked for someone elsewhere is not a safety guarantee.
- Under the cap
- none
- Spore print
- cream, white
- Cap
- Reddish-brown and irregularly wrinkled and lobed like a brain or a walnut kernel, rather than pitted like a honeycomb.
- Stem
- Short, thick, whitish, and stuffed with cottony tissue or chambered — not a clean hollow.
- Growing on
- soil, conifer litter
- Season
- Spring.
How to identify it
- Cap wrinkled and lobed like a brain, not pitted with a honeycomb of ridges and hollows.
- Cut it lengthwise: false morels are stuffed with cottony tissue or irregularly chambered. True morels are completely hollow from cap tip to stem base.
- Cap attaches only at the top, hanging like a skirt, rather than being fused to the stem along its length.
- Appears in spring alongside true morels, in similar habitat.
What it is confused with
One test settles each of these.
Slice it lengthwise. A true morel is completely hollow inside and its cap is honeycomb-pitted and fused to the stem.