The lookalike pairs that matter
Mushroom poisoning is rarely a case of eating something random. It is nearly always one of a handful of specific mistakes, repeated over and over — and each one has a single test that would have prevented it.
Cut any small white ball in half top to bottom. A puffball is uniformly white inside; an Amanita egg shows the outline of a developing mushroom.
Agaricus has pink gills maturing to chocolate brown and a brown spore print. Death cap gills stay white.
Agaricus gills turn pink then chocolate brown and the spore print is brown. Destroying angel gills stay white forever, and it has a volva.
Slice it vertically. A puffball is featureless white; an Amanita button shows a mushroom shape inside.
Slice it lengthwise. A true morel is completely hollow inside and its cap is honeycomb-pitted and fused to the stem.
Honey fungus has a white spore print. Galerina's is rusty brown. Always take a print before considering anything clustered on wood.
Chanterelles have blunt forking ridges that run down the stem and cannot be cleanly separated from the cap, and they grow singly from soil, not clustered on wood.
Omphalotus is orange throughout and grows in fused clumps from a common base, not shelving tiers.