Q&A for How to Identify a Death Cap Mushroom

Merely touching a death cap poses no danger, but remember to wash your hands thoroughly afterward!

While a small taste of a death cap may not be lethal, you may become seriously ill.

Death caps are an invasive species and have become fairly common in the Pacific Northwest, as well as in certain regions in the Rocky Mountains.

Continue to physically remove the death caps, and also avoid watering your lawn too much, which fosters moisture conditions that death caps prefer. If you still have trouble, contact your local poison control or university extension office for help!

Unless the mushrooms are on your property, it's best to leave them for the local ecological authorities, who can track the mushrooms' presence in the area and take more proper measures, if the mushrooms are in a non-native region.

The gills are one identifying feature. To identify death cap mushrooms, you need to take into account 5 identifying characteristics: White gills that don't turn brown, cup-like volva at the base, greenish yellow cap, large skirt, and a white spore print.

Yes, but the spores do not harm you. Mushrooms can release billions of spores every day; fortunately, they are not harmful.

Poisonous mushrooms are mushrooms that can hurt or kill you.

There are also the death angels, but they have a shorter stem and are all white.

You'd feel normal immediately after eating it, however a few days later the mushroom's toxins would destroy your liver, likely killing you.

Just leave it where you found it.

There is no good or bad spore color. Mushroom identification is very complicated, and requires all descriptive features to be matched up with a good field guide. Sometimes the differences between a good and bad mushroom are very minor, such as color or smell, and those depend on the mushroom in question. It takes years of study to become comfortable enough to identify mushrooms.

No. Neither does chewing it. Taste can be used to identify a variety of mushrooms. Toxins must be metabolized (swallowed) in order to take effect. Even if swallowed, if vomiting is induced quickly enough, one can avoid being poisoned, though I would still recommend immediate hospitalization.

You can find death caps in moist, mulched areas underneath or close by trees.

There most likely is not. It would be important for whoever identifies the mushroom to be able to see it in person, so an online (or photo-based) identification service would not be very reliable. You could try getting in touch with a local or university-based mycologist and asking if they could help you ID some mushrooms. That said, there are a number of free online mushroom-identification courses that might be worth taking.

No, cooking will not render them safe to eat. They will still be poisonous.

The Death Cap contains amatoxins, which, if ingested, will destroy your liver and kidneys.

They sound like members of the Agaricus genus. As long as they don't stain yellow and smell like chemicals, they can be eaten. Find a local wild mushroom expert and show it to them to be sure.

Mushrooms from the Amanita genus (including death caps) do not typically grow in clusters.

Death cause by mushroom poisoning usually happen between 6-16 hours after ingesting the mushroom. You might not feel the effects immediately, but they can be devastating. If you eat one, just get yourself to a hospital as quickly as possible.

Death angels are really poisonous. While they are not as poisonous as the death caps, they should be viewed only and not touched or eaten.

The toxins are always present on the mushroom from when it is young to maturity. There is NO time that this mushroom is safe.

You could either grow your mushrooms in a closed place, assuring that only your mushrooms will be grown. As an open place could allow poisonous spores from other mushrooms to grow in your harmless mushrooms garden. Gardening in a closed place is much easier to grow mushrooms, as things are more easily controlled.

Yes, they can grow in coastal areas of North America. They originated in Europe but were carried along with tree seedlings brought from Europe to North America.

Yes, they are more common in coastal areas of North America. They originated in Europe, so they are less common but still can be found in Nova Scotia.