Brittlegill lookalikes: how not to confuse them with a death cap

Brittlegills seem safe: colorful, common, mostly edible. But they hide the most dangerous trap a forager can fall into — a green or whitish brittlegill is easy to mistake for the deadly death cap. This mistake has cost many people their lives, so knowing the differences is critically important.

Let’s look at the lookalikes brittlegills have and how to tell them from the death cap without fail.

The main danger: the death cap

The death cap is the most poisonous mushroom in Ukraine. When young, with a greenish or whitish cap, it looks like a brittlegill. But it has features that a brittlegill never has:

• A ring on the stem (a skirt).
• A bulb with a volva (a sac) at the base of the stem.
• Gills that are always white, even in old age.

Death cap poisoning is insidious: symptoms appear only 6–24 hours after eating, most often after 8–12, when help is already harder to give. The lethal dose is a piece of a single mushroom.

How a brittlegill differs from the death cap

• No ring. A brittlegill’s stem is smooth, with no skirt.
• No volva or bulb. The base of the stem is even, with no sac.
• A brittle stem. A brittlegill crumbles; the death cap is firmer.

The main rule: before you take a greenish or whitish brittlegill, always check the base of the stem by digging the mushroom up whole.

Other brittlegill “lookalikes”

• Acrid brittlegills. The bright red species aren’t poisonous but are bitter; you weed them out by the hot taste of a tiny crumb.
• Young amanitas. They too have a ring and a volva — features a brittlegill doesn’t have.

Read about which brittlegills are poisonous and when to pick them in our separate articles.

The main safety rule

• Dig the mushroom up whole — so you can see the base of the stem.
• Ring or volva — don’t take it. It’s no longer a brittlegill.
• Gills always white + a white bulb with a volva = deadly danger.
• At the slightest doubt about a greenish mushroom, leave it in the forest.

Sources

• “Key to the Fungi of Ukraine” (Kyiv, Naukova Dumka publishing house).
• Amanita phalloides in GBIF, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.
• Russula, Amanita phalloides in MycoBank, the international fungal nomenclature database.
• Amanita phalloides on Wikipedia.