Estimated value
Not a sellable food species.
Never sell. Pure white and beautiful. Lethal amatoxins.
poisonous · deadly
Destroying Angel
Amanita bisporigera / A. virosa
Also called White Amanita
Field marks
- Spore print
- White
- Smell
- Unpleasant, chlorine or sweet
- Trees / hosts
- Oak, Birch, Beech, Conifers
- Elevation
- Low to montane.
Description
All-white Amanita: cap, gills, ring, and volva. Young buttons look like puffball eggs until sliced. Responsible for tragedies when people 'know it's a meadow mushroom.'
Where it grows
Mixed woods, lawns near trees, forest edges.
How to find it
Learn it in mixed woods midsummer to fall. Teach every new picker the volva + white gills rule.
How to pick
Do not harvest for food. If you must move it off a trail, bag it and wash tools.
Medicinal notes
None. Liver transplant is the last-resort medical path after amatoxin poisoning.
Psychoactive / controlled
None.
Law
Not food.
Lookalikes
Meadow mushroom (Agaricus)
Agaricus has pink-then-brown gills and no volva. White gills = not Agaricus.
Matsutake / puffball buttons
Always section and excavate.
Field ID ticket
Tick every required mark in the woods. 0/3 required. This still is not laboratory certainty.
Do not eat or sell this specimen. Missing required marks.