Mushrooms we left in the forest: doubtful finds in our photos

We leave in the forest every mushroom we are not 100% sure about, even if it looks very much like an edible one. The photos below show our finds from 2025–2026 that never made it into the basket: Agaricus mushrooms on city lawns and in pine needles, a pinkgill in a garden, mushrooms resembling St George's mushroom, mushrooms on a rotting log, small pale caps in the leaf litter, and a white mushroom with a ring and a bulb. Each of them has a poisonous lookalike that our shots cannot rule out. So there is just one rule: if you don't know it, don't take it.

We do not call any of these mushrooms edible. This is not an identification key but a story about doubt: where it arose, and what exactly we were unable to check.

Agaricus mushrooms on a city lawn

Our first two finds were Agaricus mushrooms growing right in the city. We saw the first one broken on a gravelly lawn in May 2025: pink gills, a thick short stem with remnants of the veil. The pink gills and the veil remnants make it an Agaricus, but we did not identify it to species.

The second group was growing in August 2025 on a trampled city lawn. One mushroom lay gills up, showing chocolate-brown gills and a ring. We took the photo at dusk, the shot is blurry, and that is exactly why it is no good for identification.

Why didn't we take them? There are two reasons. The first is the place. The poisonous yellow stainer (Agaricus xanthodermus), according to the British guide First Nature, is especially fond of roadsides, parks, gardens and disturbed soil, although it also turns up in woodland. The second reason is metals. Agaricus mushrooms from city lawns readily accumulate cadmium and copper: a 2026 study of mushrooms from lawns in Sarajevo showed this, for example. The authors calculated that a normal portion does not exceed safe limits, so here metals are more of an additional argument. The main point is different: in a city we don't know what was in the soil under the lawn, and a yellow stainer cannot be ruled out from a blurry shot. More on this in the article can you pick mushrooms in cities and parks.

A small white ringed mushroom in pine needles

In May 2026, in a forest with pine, we found a small pale mushroom. A pale cream cap among the needles and last year's leaves, a slender white stem. At first we took it for a small Agaricus, but it had no smell at all and its gills stayed pale. So it is most likely not an Agaricus but one of the small white ringed mushrooms, perhaps a dapperling (Leucoagaricus). The species can't be told from a photo.

From a low angle you can see a skirt-like ring under the cap and a pale stem. Agaricus mushrooms, amanitas and many other mushrooms all have a ring, so a ring on its own decides nothing.

We dug the mushroom up whole to look at the base of the stem. There is no bulb or sac-like volva, only white threads of mycelium. That is a good sign, but not yet an answer.

Underneath, the gills are pale beige and free, that is, not attached to the stem, and a membranous ring holds on the stem. That combination — a small pale mushroom, free pale gills and a ring — is shared by dapperlings and by Lepiota. And some small Lepiota species are deadly: Lepiota brunneoincarnata contains the same amatoxins as the death cap, and poisonings by it are described in the medical literature. Such mushrooms can only be told apart reliably by fine details and by their spores under a microscope.

So the mushroom stayed in the forest. We don't take small white ringed mushrooms at all, even when they look like an Agaricus. How true Agaricus species are told apart is covered in the article types of Agaricus mushrooms.

A pinkgill in the garden

In May 2026, in a garden, among weeds and pebbles, lay a mushroom with a white, wavy, almost crumpled cap.

Turning it over, we saw pink gills notched near the stem and a white fibrous stem without a ring. Pink gills, coloured by pink spore powder, are found in pinkgills (Entoloma) and a few other genera. Given May and the garden, it looks like the group of garden pinkgills that grow under trees of the rose family, but we cannot rule out a poisonous pinkgill.

The livid pinkgill is one of the mushrooms that account for a large share of poisonings in Europe. It causes severe stomach pain, vomiting and diarrhoea, and the effects can be long-lasting. Its season is usually later, from early summer to late autumn, but we don't risk identifying a mushroom by the calendar alone. Even about the shield pinkgill the guides are cautious: First Nature describes its edibility as doubtful precisely because of its resemblance to its poisonous relative.

Like St George's mushroom, but without certainty

In May 2026, three firm, creamy-white caps sat among oak leaves. They looked very much like St George's mushroom, one of the earliest spring mushrooms.

We turned one cap over: the gills are crowded, narrow and creamy-white, the stem thick. The identification stayed at the level of “probably”. And for this mushroom “probably” is not enough.

The reason is the deadly fibrecap. It grows from late May to early July, that is, in the very same season, in parks, under shrubs and in grass, often under beech and lime. It contains muscarine, and among the fibrecaps (Inocybe) it is the one with reliably documented fatal cases. Here is how to tell them apart: St George's mushroom has a strong smell of fresh flour, white gills and white spore powder, and does not redden, while the fibrecap reddens with age and when touched, and its gills turn brownish. More in the article Tricholoma lookalikes.

Mushrooms on a rotting log

In early June 2026, next to a mossy log among oak leaves, a group of ochre gilled mushrooms was growing. The young caps were brown, and one old one was large and pale.

Up close you can see the mushrooms grow in a tuft, as if from a single point. This looks like the sheathed woodtuft or the poplar fieldcap, but we were unable to identify them.

One of the most dangerous mistakes is linked to exactly this kind of mushroom. On rotting wood, mostly conifer but sometimes broadleaf, grows the funeral bell (Galerina marginata). It contains amatoxins, the same ones as the death cap, and it is confused precisely with the sheathed woodtuft. The difference is small: the sheathed woodtuft's stem is covered in scales below the ring, while the funeral bell has only fine fibres there. These details are not visible in our photos, so the question “take it or not” does not even arise.

Pale caps by a stump and in pine needles

In May 2025, in an oak wood next to a mossy stump, two pale cream mushrooms were peeking out. Only the caps are visible, with no gills or stems, and you can't identify a mushroom by its cap alone.

In June 2026, in pine litter, we found several small cream caps with ochre centres. This looks like the russet toughshank, but the second check left some doubt.

Even if it is a toughshank, we wouldn't eat it: opinions range from “edible but not worth bothering with” to “can cause a severe stomach upset”. And among similar pale mushrooms in leaf and conifer litter there are Clitocybe species containing muscarine. For example, the poisonous frosty funnel has a white cap with ochre spots towards the centre, and First Nature even calls it deadly poisonous.

An Agrocybe from a distance

Another spring find: a cluster of small cream-and-brown caps among oak leaves, photographed from a distance. It looks like an Agrocybe, possibly the spring fieldcap, but we aren't sure.

From that distance you can see neither the gills, nor the stems, nor the base. Besides, the guides are reserved about the spring fieldcap: First Nature notes that most field guides advise avoiding such mushrooms. We showed what it looks like up close in a separate article about the spring fieldcap.

A white mushroom with a ring and a bulb

The most telling find dates from 29 September 2026, the same day we brought home a full basket of boletes. In mixed broadleaf and pine litter stood a white mushroom: flat brown flakes on the cap, a ring on the stem, and a rimmed bulb at the bottom.

It could have been an amanita. Or it could have been Agaricus subperonatus: below the ring it has a volva-like “boot”, and brown scales on the cap. The gills would have settled it. In Agaricus they turn pink with age and then brown to chocolate, while in amanitas they stay white all their life. The gills aren't visible in our shots, so the mushroom stayed in the forest. Remember: a white ring, white gills and a bulb or sac at the base, all together, are the hallmarks of amanitas. The death cap is among them, and it is amatoxins that are behind more than 90% of fatal mushroom poisonings. We showed what a ring, a volva and a bulb look like in the article mushroom anatomy, and how we sorted our basket that day in the article how to sort a mushroom basket after foraging.

If you don't know it, don't take it

All these stories come down to one thing. Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment puts the rule simply: pick and cook only the mushrooms you can recognise with certainty as edible. And identification apps on your phone, the same institute concludes, can be trusted only with great caution. Before you take a mushroom, check:

• the gills: their colour and how it changes with age;
• the stem: ring, scales, fibres;
• the base: bulb, sac-like volva, rim, which is why a doubtful mushroom is dug up whole;
• the cut and the smell: does it turn yellow, red or blue, and what does it smell of;
• the place: a city, a roadside, the tree the mushroom grows on.

If even one answer is “I don't know” or “can't see it in the photo”, the mushroom stays in the forest. And if someone feels unwell after a mushroom dish, call an ambulance (112 in the EU, 103 in Ukraine) and keep the leftovers of the dish and the peelings. What to do next is in the article mushroom poisoning: symptoms and first aid.