Cap color

Olive

Olive is a complex mix of green, brown and yellow pigments. In the forest, where the ground is covered with fallen leaves and moss, an olive cap gives a mushroom perfect camouflage. This color is typical of several very well-known species, one of which is a deadly threat.

24 species in the database.

The olive shade of the death cap

As M.Ya. Zerova stresses in her works, the most characteristic color of the most poisonous mushroom in the world — the death cap (Amanita phalloides) — is precisely olive or olive-green.

The death cap's cap is often not evenly colored: it has a darker olive center and lighter edges, with characteristic darker radial fibrils embedded in the skin. It is this dull olive shade that lets inexperienced foragers confuse it with edible green brittlegills or grisettes.

Olive delicacies and conditionally edible mushrooms

Yet olive is not found only in poisonous species. David Arora and Roger Phillips also describe safe (or conditionally safe) mushrooms of this shade:

1. Lurid bolete (Suillellus luridus): An excellent conditionally edible mushroom from the bolete family. Its cap is an olive-brown, velvety color. Underneath, the cap has red pores, and the flesh instantly turns a very dark blue when cut.

2. Ugly milk cap (Lactarius turpis): The cap of this mushroom is dark olive, brownish-green, sometimes appearing almost black. When cut, it releases an acrid milky latex. This mushroom needs long soaking and is considered a delicacy when salted (although in the West it is regarded as inedible).

3. Xerocomus boletes (Xerocomus): Most Xerocomus species (including the suede bolete) have a cap ranging from yellow-olive to brownish-olive.

Questions and answers

Why is olive such a changeable color?

The olive shade comes from a mix of different pigments. If a mushroom grows in direct sunlight, the yellow-green pigments break down first, and an olive cap can fade to pale yellow or grey (as often happens with the death cap).

If I found an olive mushroom with a sponge (tubes) under the cap, could it be a death cap?

NO! The death cap (like all amanitas) is strictly a gilled mushroom. Tubed mushrooms with an olive cap (Suillellus, Xerocomus) never contain amatoxins. This is one of the most important identification skills: always look not only at the cap color but also at the structure of the hymenophore underneath!

Sources

1.Зерова М.Я. та ін. Визначник грибів України. 1979
2.Roger Phillips. Mushrooms (Roger Phillips)
3.David Arora. Mushrooms Demystified
4.Index Fungorum