Oyster Mushroom
No known toxinsPleurotus ostreatus
Oyster mushrooms grow in shelving clusters on dead and dying hardwood, particularly beech, poplar and willow. The white gills running down a stubby off-centre stem, on wood, is a distinctive combination.
Quick facts
- If eaten
- No significant toxins and widely cultivated. The main lookalike concern is the toxic Omphalotus, which is orange and grows in fused clumps rather than shelves. Confirm locally.
- Under the cap
- gills
- Spore print
- white, cream
- Cap
- Fan or oyster-shaped, smooth, white through grey to tan, in overlapping shelves.
- Stem
- Very short, off-centre or absent, with the gills running right down it.
- Growing on
- wood dead, wood living
- Season
- Autumn through winter, and after mild wet spells.
How to identify it
- Gills run down onto the very short, off-centre stem.
- Growing in overlapping shelves on wood.
- White to cream spore print.
- Soft flesh with a faint aniseed smell in fresh specimens.
What it is confused with
One test settles each of these.
Omphalotus is orange throughout and grows in fused clumps from a common base, not shelving tiers.
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.