Red-capped mushrooms: edible and dangerous

A bright red cap among the greenery can be seen from afar and always catches the eye. But red color by itself says nothing about edibility: mushrooms with a red cap include the tasty red-capped scaber stalk, the poisonous amanita and the bitter brittlegill. So what matters isn't the color but the other features.

Let's go through the main mushrooms with a red cap, which of them are edible, which are dangerous and how not to confuse them.

Edible mushrooms with a red cap

Several prized mushrooms have reddish or orange-red coloring.

• **Red-capped scaber stalk.** Also known as the redcap. A brick-red or orange cap and a firm stem with dark scales. An excellent edible bolete whose flesh turns blue or darkens when cut. Grows under aspens and other trees.
• **Reddish brittlegills.** Many brittlegills have red tones. Some of them are edible with a mild taste, so here the bitterness test decides, not the color.

What the edible ones have in common: the red cap comes with a stem, flesh and smell that are normal for the species, with no skirt and no sac at the base.

Poisonous mushrooms with a red cap

It's the bright red mushrooms that most often put people on alert, and for good reason.

• **Fly agaric.** The best-known poisonous mushroom: a bright red cap with white spots, a skirt and a swelling at the base. Here the color really is a warning.
• **Sickener.** A bright red, acrid brittlegill with a burning taste that causes digestive upset.
• **Devil's bolete.** A bolete with reddish pores and a stem that turns blue when cut. Poisonous, though not deadly.

As you can see, the red-capped ones include both bright poisonous amanitas and treacherous brittlegills. So color is only a reason to take a closer look.

How to tell them apart

To avoid mistakes with a red-capped mushroom, check the features one by one.

1. Look under the cap. Pores (a sponge) mean a bolete (red-capped scaber stalk, devil's bolete). Gills mean an amanita or a brittlegill.
2. Check the stem. A skirt plus a sac at the base is the mark of an amanita. Scales on the stem point to a red-capped scaber stalk.
3. Taste the brittlegill. Put a tiny piece on your tongue: burning and bitter, don't pick it; mild, it's edible. Spit the piece out.
4. Look at the cut. Bluing in a bolete with red pores is a reason to be wary of the devil's bolete.

Red-capped mushrooms illustrate the main rule well: color doesn't determine edibility. More examples of red mushrooms in the collection by cap color, and general guidance in the rules for safe foraging.

Sources

• “Key to the Fungi of Ukraine” (Kyiv, Naukova Dumka publishing house).
• Leccinum aurantiacum in GBIF, the global biodiversity database.
• Fungi in MycoBank, the international nomenclature database for fungi.
• Amanita muscaria on Wikipedia.