Amanitas 

The amanitas are some of the most toxic and best-known mushrooms that an be found in uk and worldwide woodlands. 

Some Amanitas are edible and delicious like the blusher and cesars mushroom but there are also some of the world’s most poisonous mushrooms such as the Death Cap and the Destroying Angel.

This is a genus to express extreme caution. Poisioning symptoms include, violent gastric upset, followed by a period of wellness but while you feel ok the toxin is destroying your liver and kidneys, death usually occurs 3-5 days after eating the mushroom.

The key identifying features for amanita mushrooms are:

• Grows near trees (mycorhizzal)

• A cap with a central stem and gills

• Gills are white

• Gills are usually free of the stem (occationally adnext)

• Has a bulbous base or egg-sack (Volva)

• Sometimes has scales, warts or egg fragments on the cap

• There is a ring or skirt on the stem (although the grisettes dont have this feature)

• Leaves a white spore print?

Grisettes they are the only amanitas that dont have a skirt on the stem, so it is sometimes hard to narrow them down to this genus. They do emerge from the charactristic amanita egg or volval sack as th egive away and also have a striped margin ( cap edge) which are your main features for identification

If you’ve answered yes to these questions you are probably looking at a member of the Amanita genus. The most commonly found ones are

●               Fly Agaric (Amanita Muscaria)

●   Death Cap (Amanita Phalloides)

●   False Deathcap (Amanita Citrina)

●   The Panther Cap (Amanita Pantherina)

●   The Destroying Angel (Amanita Virosa)

●   The Grey Spotted Amanita (Amanita Excelsa)

●   The Grisette (Amanita Vaginata)

●   The Blusher (Amanita Rubescens)

●   Orange Grisette (Amanita Crocea)

●              Tawny Grisette (Amanita Fulva 

Look a likes

Puffballs 

The Amanitas in thier young egg stage can be confused with Puffballs.  If cut your Puffballs in half and there is signs of a stem and gills its not a puffball but a baby amanita (do not eat this!!), the inside of a puffball should be pure white and spongy like marshmallows. .

Agaricus mushrooms

If you pick a very young agaricus before its cap has fully opened they can look like an amanita, again a slice in half will reveal the gills, amanitas all have white gills, agarics have off-white to pink gills when they are young. Agaricus also lack any egg or blubous base

Parasols

There are a number of similarities between these two genus,
they have bulbous bases, a white spore print, they can have warty like scales on the cap,
have a skirt on their stems and they both have white gills which are free.
The scales on the caps of parasols mushrooms cannot be removed like on Amanitas, also the skirt, on a parasol is classed as double ring and not floppy like a skirt, which should easily move up and down the stem.