Field Mushroom
No known toxinsAgaricus campestris · also called meadow mushroom
The wild relative of the supermarket button mushroom, found in grazed pasture and lawns. The gill colour progression is what makes it identifiable and what separates it from the lethal white Amanitas: pink gills darkening to chocolate brown, and a brown spore print.
Quick facts
- If eaten
- No significant toxins, and widely eaten. But this is the species people confuse with destroying angels, with fatal results. If the gills are white, stop. Confirm with an expert.
- Under the cap
- gills
- Spore print
- brown, purple-black
- Cap
- White to cream, smooth or slightly fibrous, domed then flattening.
- Stem
- Short, white, with a fairly delicate ring and no cup or sac at the base.
- Growing on
- grass, soil
- Season
- Late summer and autumn.
How to identify it
- Gills start pink and mature to chocolate brown. Gills that stay white are a serious warning.
- Brown to purple-brown spore print.
- No cup or sac at the stem base. Dig it up and check.
- Growing in grass, typically in grazed pasture rather than woodland.
What it is confused with
One test settles each of these.
White gills that never darken, a white spore print, and a sac at the stem base. Any one of those means do not eat it.
Yellow stainer
Yellow stainer bruises chrome yellow at the stem base when cut and smells of ink or phenol. It causes gastric illness.
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.