About their stems and gills if they even have gills and spore prints. A lot goes into identifying a safe-to-eat mushroom. But that makes the experience all the more rewarding. A lot of people never even consider foraging for mushrooms because they fear harvesting and eating a poisonous mushroom.

Thousands of people ever year in the U. eat mushrooms that are toxic. Fortunately, the vast majority of them only have to endure some temporary discomfort before making a full recovery. But each year, two to three people die from eating poisonous mushrooms. And a few more than that land in the hospital, possibly in need of liver transplant.

But, if you take the time to learn the craft and follow a few commonsense precautions, hunting for wild mushrooms is very safe. Make sure you find one that also includes the toxic mushrooms in your region, especially the ones that are easily mistaken for edibles.

If you want to positively identify a safe-to-eat mushroom, you also need to be able to positively identify the ones that are not safe. A few other items that will make your mushroom hunt enjoyable are a small wicker basket or mesh bag, a knife, a small trowel, and a soft brush.

Mushroom foragers favor the wicker basket or mesh bag because it allows their harvest to disperse spores as they walk — more future mushrooms.

The knife can be used for cutting mushrooms. The trowel can be used for gently digging a mushroom out of the ground from its base — sometimes important for making a positive ID.

Finally, bring a notebook and a smartphone for taking notes and pictures. Bug spray, plenty of water, some sunscreen, and a snack will round out your hunting supplies. You could head up to the mountains or you could even try visiting a local park or riverside. Make sure you pick a time of year when the temperature and conditions are right for your target shrooms.

Some days foragers find a basketful of mushrooms. Other days they find nothing at all. Either way, the time outside and the possibility of finding and identifying some mushrooms are enjoyable for their own sake.

During your first mushroom foraging trips, focus on identifying mushrooms rather than harvesting them for food. By all means, pick a few of each type of mushroom you find. When you pick your mushrooms, take notes on where they were growing.

Description: Death caps have a 6-inch-wide cap, often sticky to the touch, that can be yellowish, brownish, whitish or greenish in color. The cap has white gills and grows on a stalk about 5 inches tall with skirting on the stem and a white cup at its base.

It can emit a faint, honey-sweet smell that some describe as an unpleasant, cleaning-product smell. Can be confused with: Young death caps can resemble puffballs, including genera Calvatia, Calbovista, and Lycoperdon, as well as tropical edible paddy-straw mushrooms. When seen: Death caps can appear from September to November.

Habitat: Under pines, oaks, dogwoods, and other trees. Destroying angels get their name from their pure white stalks and caps. Like the death caps, they belong to the genus Amanita , with several species occurring in different regions of the country. All Amanita varieties have a similar white fruiting body.

Ingesting a half-cap can kill a healthy adult. Description: An attractive white cap, stalk, and gills. Can be confused with: In their button stage, destroying angels can be confused with button mushrooms, meadow mushrooms, horse mushrooms, and puffballs. When seen: Destroying angels appear in the summer and autumn months.

Habitat: All Amanita species form relationships with the roots of certain trees. Destroying angels can be found in or near woodlands or near shrubs and trees in suburban lawns or meadows. How to identify: The cap should have a few loose flecks left over from a veil that covered the mushroom in its early fruiting stage.

It will have a bulbous skirt around the stem that contains most of its toxins, as well as a cup at the stem's base, known as the volva, which could be hidden underground.

There are plenty of edible mushrooms that are safe to eat. We've highlighted three you might find on your next search. Also known as the bearded tooth, hedgehog, or pompom mushroom, the distinctive Hericium erinaceus can be found growing on hardwood trees in late summer and fall.

Its distinctive shape, which resembles the mane of a male lion or a pompom, is unlike any other mushroom. Its taste is also unique and often compared to seafood.

How to identify: Beech trees are frequent hosts, as are other types of hardwood. Another identifying characteristic is that it tends to grow its spines from one group rather than from branches.

It can also grow very high in the trees, as much as 40 feet up the trunk. They can also be found growing on dead logs. This mushroom is prolific in the Northeast but has been found as far west as Idaho. Because they can grow quite large and become too tough to eat, they should be harvested when they are young.

Older specimens can be dried, powdered, and used for soups and sauces, also for a unique breading adjunct. How to identify: Maitakes have small, overlapping tongues or fan-shaped caps. They like to grow on oak trees, typically on dead or dying wood or stumps. It has a single white stem from which it grows, and the underside looks similar to the bottom of a cauliflower.

Oyster mushrooms Pleurotus ostreatus belong to a genus of some of the most commonly eaten mushrooms. They can be found in every season of the year but are most prolific in cooler weather.

Be sure to clean carefully to remove any insects that may be hiding in the gills. Also make sure to discard the stems, which tend to be woody. How to identify: Look for their scalloped caps on dying hardwood trees such as oaks, maples, and dogwoods, especially after the first rains of the fall.

The caps are a whitish-gray, sometimes tan. Cultivated varieties found in grocery stores may have blue, yellow, or pink caps. The gills are described as "decurrent," meaning they run down from the underside of the cap into the stem, but not necessarily all the way to the ground.

They often grow in a shelf-like, overlapping formation and are smooth with no bumps or discolorations. Tradd Cotter runs a fungi research lab and growing operation on his Mushroom Mountain woodland in Liberty, South Carolina.

He shared these tips with readers on mushroom foraging:. Maxwell Moor-Smith, BSc, Raymond Li, BSc Pharm , MSc, Omar Ahmad, MD, FRCPC. BCMJ, Vol. Both Brill and Officinalis describe the inside of puffball mushrooms as soft and white, making it reminiscent of tofu in appearance and texture.

Given this similarity, Officinalis and Brill say you can cook with puffballs the same way you might cook tofu. Officinalis states puffballs are especially great because they tend to soak up flavors really well.

Many wild mushrooms will last about as long as the standard store-bought mushroom, and you can store them a number of ways. According to Brill, fresh mushrooms need to breathe, so be sure to store them in paper or wax paper bags.

You can also cook the mushrooms and freeze them. To store the mushrooms for longer, Officinalis recommends dehydrating them with a food dehydrator or by cooking them in the oven at a low temperature.

Four common edible mushrooms you might see when foraging are the chicken of the wood, chanterelles, morels, and giant puffballs, but there are many more to find with additional research and learning. Would-be foragers should make sure to rely on foraging guides and experts around them to begin learning, and to exercise caution and patience when identifying for certain what is or is not edible.

Take photos and do spore prints and learn as much as you can about your local topography. Learn from as many local mushroom hunters as you have access to.

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Written by Megan Wahn.

As a shell fungus and polypore, they have a web of pores on the underside of the fruiting body as opposed to gills like some mushrooms. But one of their most distinguishing features is their color: a bright orange that Officinalis explains you can spot from a mile away.

While these mushrooms appear most commonly on the East Coast in mid to late summer and early fall, Officinalis states another edible species known as the Laetiporus gilbertsonii grows on the West Coast on eucalyptus trees.

As their name implies, these mushrooms mimic the texture and taste of chicken meat. Brill states he especially likes them for sauteing, while Officinalis says you can also batter or deep fry them like actual chicken.

Morels, most commonly found in the midwest, encompass a subfamily of mushrooms that tend to be a brown or lighter blonde color and are hollow from top to bottom. While the stems are smooth, their bodies, or the cap, feature honeycomb-looking pits, giving them a dimpled and wrinkled appearance.

According to Officinalis, morels taste a bit earthy and can absorb other flavors very well when cooked. But it's their "bouncy" texture that really makes them stand out to Officinalis.

Brill further describes them as having blunt gills that run down the stem of the mushroom. Chanterelles, which include many specific types, also hold a distinct apricot scent that tends to keep even when you cook them, giving it a sweetness that combines with the mushroom's rich and nutty flavors as well.

Brill says this makes chanterelles perfect for classic French cuisines, as well as some soups and casseroles, while Officinalis says she likes to use hers in especially creamy dishes.

She also explains that the bright color of chanterelles upholds well when cooking, which makes them a great plating mushroom. Chanterelles can most be found throughout the summer and into early fall in mixed hardwood forests, where deciduous forests meet coniferous.

A commonly foraged mushroom currently sweeping through TikTok , the giant puffball mushroom looks spherical and large, with some growing to the size of a beach ball. You can mostly find them in fields either on the ground or on wood during fall or early spring.

Both Brill and Officinalis describe the inside of puffball mushrooms as soft and white, making it reminiscent of tofu in appearance and texture. Given this similarity, Officinalis and Brill say you can cook with puffballs the same way you might cook tofu.

Officinalis states puffballs are especially great because they tend to soak up flavors really well. Many wild mushrooms will last about as long as the standard store-bought mushroom, and you can store them a number of ways. According to Brill, fresh mushrooms need to breathe, so be sure to store them in paper or wax paper bags.

You can also cook the mushrooms and freeze them. To store the mushrooms for longer, Officinalis recommends dehydrating them with a food dehydrator or by cooking them in the oven at a low temperature. Four common edible mushrooms you might see when foraging are the chicken of the wood, chanterelles, morels, and giant puffballs, but there are many more to find with additional research and learning.

They range in color from cream to almost black, and their honeycomb pattern makes them easy to spot. They're hard to find, and thus special—not to mention utterly delicious, converting many a non-mushroom-lover to fandom. Where they grow: Morels grow in almost every state.

Exceptions are Florida and Arizona, which are too hot and arid for these mushrooms to thrive. When to forage: You can forage morels in the early spring before trees leaf out and make them harder to spot.

Habitat: Morels thrive in moist areas and on specific tree types—ash, tulip, oak, hickory, sycamore, cottonwood, maple, beech, conifers, and apples.

How to identify: Look for the iconic honeycomb-looking or corrugated-type cap that grows above a white stem. Inside, it will be hollow all the way from cap through stem when cut open.

There are approximately a dozen species of false morels that grow in the United States. False morels fruit in the spring at the same time as morels as well as in the summer and fall. How to differentiate from an edible morel: Though people sometimes confuse the two, they are actually quite different.

The caps of false morels have a wrinkled, brain-like, or saddle-shaped structure rather than a honeycomb look. Also, when sliced down the middle lengthwise from the top, false morels have a cotton-ball-looking substance inside their stems. They are not hollow, unlike true morels.

Their color is more red, purple, and brown, whereas the true morel is yellow, gray, or tan in appearance. And the former is definitely less attractive.

As one source explains , "To put it simply, a false morel looks a true morel that was stepped on and left out in the sun and rain. Mushrooms in the genus Amanita are among the deadliest in the world. Here are some ways to recognize and avoid two of these.

This highly toxic mushroom Amanita phalloides is blamed for the most mushroom poisonings in the world. While native to Europe, death caps also form on the east and west coasts of the United States and in Canada. Description: Death caps have a 6-inch-wide cap, often sticky to the touch, that can be yellowish, brownish, whitish or greenish in color.

The cap has white gills and grows on a stalk about 5 inches tall with skirting on the stem and a white cup at its base. It can emit a faint, honey-sweet smell that some describe as an unpleasant, cleaning-product smell. Can be confused with: Young death caps can resemble puffballs, including genera Calvatia, Calbovista, and Lycoperdon, as well as tropical edible paddy-straw mushrooms.

When seen: Death caps can appear from September to November. Habitat: Under pines, oaks, dogwoods, and other trees. Destroying angels get their name from their pure white stalks and caps.

Like the death caps, they belong to the genus Amanita , with several species occurring in different regions of the country. All Amanita varieties have a similar white fruiting body.

Ingesting a half-cap can kill a healthy adult. Description: An attractive white cap, stalk, and gills. Can be confused with: In their button stage, destroying angels can be confused with button mushrooms, meadow mushrooms, horse mushrooms, and puffballs. When seen: Destroying angels appear in the summer and autumn months.

Habitat: All Amanita species form relationships with the roots of certain trees. Destroying angels can be found in or near woodlands or near shrubs and trees in suburban lawns or meadows.

How to identify: The cap should have a few loose flecks left over from a veil that covered the mushroom in its early fruiting stage.

It will have a bulbous skirt around the stem that contains most of its toxins, as well as a cup at the stem's base, known as the volva, which could be hidden underground. There are plenty of edible mushrooms that are safe to eat. We've highlighted three you might find on your next search.

Also known as the bearded tooth, hedgehog, or pompom mushroom, the distinctive Hericium erinaceus can be found growing on hardwood trees in late summer and fall. Its distinctive shape, which resembles the mane of a male lion or a pompom, is unlike any other mushroom.

Its taste is also unique and often compared to seafood. How to identify: Beech trees are frequent hosts, as are other types of hardwood. Another identifying characteristic is that it tends to grow its spines from one group rather than from branches.

For more details about scarlet elf cups in our wild mushroom guide click here. I think the cauliflower fungus looks more like a pasta chef has had a very experimental afternoon! They will grow to a very large size as you can see from the picture above Eric is a size 9 shoe.

We have seen larger than this and heard stories of cauliflower fungus reaching over a metre in diameter, though I cannot confirm those.

Like all the other mushrooms in this article we consider this a safe mushroom to pick once mature as at this size and colour with these pasta shell characteristics there is nothing you could mistake it for.

When harvesting from a mushroom this size we only tend to take smaller sections rather than the whole thing. In the Kitchen Culinary Rating 7 out of 10 This is a really tasty mushroom, on a par with the Field Blewit in my opinion, but rated lower in the kitchen due to the preparation and cleaning process.

That goes for any dirt, leaves or any other woodland detritus that the mushroom often grows around too. Once cleaned you have a lovely edible mushroom with an unusual texture. a bit like soft pasta. For more details about the cauliflower fungus in our wild mushroom guide click here. Identification Safety Rating 9 out of 10 Field Blewits are a gourmet mushroom, much coveted by chefs, and available in most good French markets.

As the name suggests, these mushrooms grow in grassy fields, they are also a late fruiting species, normally available from Late October and through November, often into December too. They are quite hardy and can take a reasonable frost, in fact they wait for the temperature to drop before fruiting, so a warm October is no good for them.

Like many other grassland species they grow in rings. We have seen rings of Field Blewits over 25 feet in diameter. From the top they are a relatively non distinct mushroom, and can often be quite hard to spot, but once you have picked them the key identifying feature will become clear.

Nothing else growing in rings in fields from November onwards will have this beautiful downy stem flushed with violet. In the Kitchen Culinary Rating 8 out of 10 Like most wild mushrooms, Field Blewits must be cooked before eating, if consumed raw you are likely to get a bit of a dicky tummy from them.

These really are a lovely mushroomy flavoured mushroom though with a good firm texture if cooked properly. Much coveted by chefs all over Europe you would have to pay roughly 10 times as much for Field Blewits than for your normal button mushrooms if you are lucky enough to find them on sale anywhere in the UK.

Whether they are 10 times as tasty I have my doubts, but you can decide that for yourself when you find them :.

They do tend to hold a lot of water so when frying fresh from the forage you may need to keep removing the water from your frying pan for a while in the early stages of cooking unless you want slightly stewed mushrooms, keep the water though as it is lovely mushroomy stock to use later.

For more details about the field blewit in our wild mushroom guide click here. My dilemma is based on the fact that people have been known to poison themselves in the past thinking they were picking Penny Buns.

I still believe they are a very safe mushroom to pick though; as long as you follow some simple rules. The Penny Bun mushroom is in the boletus family of mushrooms.

I emphasize this point because the poisonings I have heard of involved people eating gilled mushrooms thinking they were Penny Buns. So you are looking for a mushroom similar to the picture above, with sponge under the cap instead of gills.

There will be no skirt on the stem of the Penny Bun, but as you can see from the photo above there is a webbing effect on the white stem near to where it meets the cap.

This web effect is white over a slightly darker background with the Penny Bun and slightly darker on a lighter background for the Bitter Bolete see below. With the Penny Bun the sponge will be white, the flesh will be white, the stem will be white, and the cap will start whitish when very young, quickly becoming brown as it matures.

Apart from that if you follow the rules above you should only ever pick a Penny Bun! In the Kitchen Culinary Rating 10 out of 10 This and other members of the Boletus family are my personal favourite mushrooms to eat in any way.

The texture and taste are both lovely fresh and can be used in the same way as any normal mushroom. Generally when you buy Penny Buns, or Porcini as they are known in the shops; you buy them dried for soups or stew type dishes.

The process of drying not only means that you can keep them for a very long time but also enhances the flavour. You can rehydrate the mushrooms before cooking if you want to but as long as there is plenty of liquid in whatever you are cooking, there is actually no need as they will re-hydrate through the cooking process.

Therefore to me the most important thing to know about Penny Buns is how to dry them. We favour the air drying method unless you have a dehydrator handy. Simply cut the mushrooms to about half centimeter slices, put them on a wire rack or anything else that will let the air circulate around them and point a fan at them until they are dry.

This preserves all the fresh flavour. For more details about penny buns in our wild mushroom guide click here. Identification Safety Rating 9 out of 10 Oyster Mushrooms get their name because of the wavy oyster shell like edge to the caps of the mature specimens, as you can see in the photo above.

None are deadly though. Most notably the oysterling which looks very similar to a young oyster mushroom. So for the novice forager we recommend only harvesting mature specimens with a cap of over 10cm in diameter.

They grow from almost any type of dead wood, we have even seen them growing from skirting boards. They are a gilled mushroom, not a polypore. Those gills are its last key identifier, they run down the stem very far, often all the way to the wood the mushroom is growing from.

The photo above is of the grey version, there are also white and sometimes even yellow and pink versions in the UK too.

Size matters with all of them though, so if you find a small one, leave it and go back a couple of days later to see how big it has got. After a while you will probably be confident picking younger specimens too, but if you stick to the big ones early on you will be ruling out any mistakes.

Interestingly these mushrooms are about the easiest to cultivate in the world, as they grow from almost any substrate. In the Kitchen Culinary Rating 8 out of 10 If you are a mushroom fan you have probably used oyster mushrooms already as they are one of the most widely available in shops.

This is due to how easy they are to cultivate. The Irish way is basically baked on a low heat after smothering in butter and seasoning :. For more details about oyster mushrooms in our wild mushroom guide click here.

Posted in Tips and Things We Like. This is a great strarting point! Clear photos and information. And yea i will be sure to triple confirm any mushroom i find before eating.

Hi Jac, if you email some photos to [email protected] we will take a look and let you know what mushroom we think you have. Firstly thank you so much for helping me start my fungi journey. Keep up the great work. If you send some pictures to [email protected] then we can take a look and let you know what we think it is.

Hi Louisa, you can send us some pictures using our contact form on the contact us page or you can email them to [email protected]. Hi Maggie, there are many members of the Agaric genus.

Have a look at the page for the blushing wood mushroom on our I. D page and see if it matches your mushroom. Love your website. My wife and I are new to foraging but your pictures and explanations are really clear.

Thanks a lot. Really useful information. Just started collecting and identifying and your guide is great confirmation after also checking in my filed guide. Hi, newbie here. Had a beautiful puffball as steaks and soup , felt obviously very safe, why are Bay Bolete not in your top ten, looking at the description of them, not sure what I might confuse then with really.

Keep walking past lovely free food! Hi Steve, I love the Bay Bolete but it can be harder to identify to species than the mushrooms mentioned in the article.