Poisonous Mushrooms

Poisonous

An Amanita

This is an amanita mushroom; as far as I can tell, it's most likely Amanita pantherina, one of the many poisonous species. It could also be any one of a variety of other amanitas, all of which it's best to avoid. Amanitas are one of the easiest genus of mushrooms to identify without diggin' em up and looking at them. They are huge, fleshy and always have white gills. Some species have a sack at the base, some have warts on the cap and some have a veil, but the white gills are a giveaway.

This is a Woolly Chanterelle, a mildly poisonous mushroom which grows close by and looks similar to a highly sought-after edible mushroom, the Chanterelle. The Woolly Chanterelle has a scaly, or woolly cap surface. It's gills are usually sharp, like most mushrooms, but this one was growing in very wet weather and looks like it has the folded irregular gills of the Chanterelle.

Woolly Chanterelle

This is a handful of true Chanterelles; they are a more golden orange, and the color of the gills is almost as strong as that of the cap. The caps are all very irregular in shape.

Woolly Chanterelles are almost always a perfect horn shape, and they also tend to grow larger than real Chanterelles. The cap color is a more pronounced orange, or even red, and the gills are much more pale than the cap.