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The deadly webcap and the chanterelle are easiest to tell apart underneath the cap: a chanterelle has thick, blunt, forking ridges that run down the stem, while the deadly webcap has true, thin gills that turn rusty brown with age. Getting it wrong can cost you your kidneys, so turn every mushroom over before it goes in the basket.
The chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius) is a fine edible. The deadly webcap (Cortinarius rubellus, long known in medical papers as C. speciosissimus) contains orellanine, which destroys the kidneys, and the first signs of poisoning take days to show. In practice it rarely replaces a bright yellow chanterelle in the basket. It's far more often picked along with the trumpet chanterelle (Craterellus tubaeformis, also called winter chanterelle or yellowfoot), because the two grow side by side.
Underneath the cap. Chanterelles and trumpet chanterelles have no true gills, just thick, blunt, wrinkled ridges with cross-veins that fork and run down the stem. The deadly webcap has real gills: thin, blade-like and fairly widely spaced, ochre or cinnamon when young and rusty brown when mature. This is the most reliable check.
The cobweb veil. On a young deadly webcap a fine, cobweb-like veil stretches from the cap edge to the stem, and its fibres stay on the stem dusted with rusty spores. Chanterelles have nothing like it.
Spore print. Rusty brown in the deadly webcap. Pale yellow to cream in the chanterelle, white or very pale yellow in the trumpet chanterelle. No chanterelle gives a rusty-brown print.
Stem. The webcap's stem is fibrous, the colour of the cap or paler, often with yellow bands or a zigzag pattern left by the veil, especially on young specimens (it can fade on old ones). The trumpet chanterelle's stem is yellow, hollow and slightly flattened. The chanterelle's is short and firm, flaring smoothly into the cap.
Cap. The chanterelle is egg-yolk yellow and funnel-shaped with a wavy edge. The deadly webcap is fox-orange to reddish brown, 3–8 cm across, bell-shaped at first, then convex, often with a pointed bump in the centre. The bump can be blunt, so don't rely on it.
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Colour. The webcap's fox-orange cap looks like a trumpet chanterelle's brown one and, to a beginner, like a chanterelle.
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Smell. The deadly webcap smells faintly of radish at most, nothing off-putting.
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Cooking, frying, drying. None of them destroy orellanine, and dried specimens stay toxic for decades.
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"I felt fine the next day." First signs usually appear 1.5–6 days later, so feeling well after dinner means nothing.
Turn over every mushroom, golden and trumpet chanterelles alike. Ridges or gills?
If you see thin gills like an ordinary gilled mushroom, it isn't a chanterelle. Don't put it in the basket.
On young mushrooms, check the cap edge and the stem: a cobweb veil, yellow bands or rusty dust mean a webcap.
If you're unsure, leave the cap gills-down on white paper for a few hours. A rusty-brown print means a webcap, not a chanterelle.
Found a webcap among your pickings? Bin the whole basket.
Orellanine attacks the kidneys, and there's no antidote. First signs include nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, an intense burning thirst, headache, chills and aching muscles. They usually appear 1.5–6 days after the meal, occasionally the next day, and kidney failure develops gradually, up to 2–3 weeks later. It's often permanent, leaving people on dialysis or waiting for a transplant.
Call emergency services on 112 (999 in the UK) or your local poison centre. Keep any leftover mushrooms (or a photo). Don't make yourself sick. Take activated charcoal only if a doctor or the call handler tells you to. If a deadly webcap might have been in the meal, call emergency services on 112 (999 in the UK) or your local poison centre straight away, even if you feel fine, ask for your kidneys to be checked (creatinine) and mention any wild mushrooms eaten in the past three weeks.
The deadly webcap and the trumpet chanterelle like exactly the same spots: damp spruce and pine woods on acid soil, in moss and among bilberry. Norway's Poisons Information Centre warns that the webcap often grows in the same patches of forest, and Swedish researchers report several poisonings caused by exactly this mix-up. A trumpet chanterelle has a brown cap 2–5 cm across, so one fox-orange webcap is easy to miss in a handful.
In one season, Norwegian mushroom inspectors had to throw away 11 whole baskets because of the deadly webcap. Their advice is simple: pick trumpet chanterelles one at a time, never by the handful. If a deadly webcap has already landed in your basket, throw out everything in it, not just the webcap.
If your lookalike is bright orange and soft, with crowded thin gills that fork again and again, and grows in conifer litter, it's most likely the false chanterelle. It isn't deadly, but it's best left alone; see our page on the chanterelle vs false chanterelle.
In summer 1979 three young adults in Scotland ate deadly webcaps; according to a British field guide, they had taken them for chanterelles. Two never regained kidney function and had transplants nine months later. In Sweden, 22 people were poisoned between 1979 and 1993, nine suffered permanent kidney failure and five had transplants. Swedish doctors write that one to three deadly webcaps are considered enough to cause severe kidney failure.
In 2008 the author Nicholas Evans and his family cooked deadly webcaps together with chanterelles in Scotland. He thought they were ceps, even though they had gills. Four adults ended up on dialysis, and Evans spent around three years on it before a kidney transplant.
Chanterelles fruit from June to October, sometimes November, under both broadleaf trees and conifers. The deadly webcap appears from July to November, mostly August to October, mainly in conifer and mixed woods, occasionally in broadleaf woods. Trumpet chanterelles come from September to November and form dense colonies in West Wales, north-west England and Scotland. So late summer and autumn in damp conifer woods is when all three can share the same patch.
In Britain the deadly webcap is found mainly in Scotland and becomes rarer further south; in southern England and Wales it's rare. It's rarely recorded in Ireland, but webcaps are under-recorded, so don't assume it's absent.
| Characteristic | Chanterelle | Deadly webcap |
|---|---|---|
| Edibility class | Chanterelle: Edible | Deadly webcap: Deadly poisonous |
| Use | Chanterelle: Culinary, Cook fresh, Freezing, Salting | Deadly webcap: Not eaten |
| Cap colour | Chanterelle: Yellow, Orange | Deadly webcap: Orange, Rusty, Brown |
| Cap shape | Chanterelle: Funnel-shaped, Concave | Deadly webcap: Conical, Convex, Umbonate |
| Cap surface | Chanterelle: Smooth | Deadly webcap: Fibrous, Dry |
| Taste | Chanterelle: Peppery, Mild | Deadly webcap: Unknown |
| Smell | Chanterelle: Fruity | Deadly webcap: Radish-like |
| Hymenophore | Chanterelle: Ridged | Deadly webcap: Gilled |
| Ring (veil) | Chanterelle: No ring | Deadly webcap: Cobweb-like |
| Substrate | Chanterelle: Soil, Forest litter | Deadly webcap: Soil, Moss |
| Partner trees | Chanterelle: Beech, Oak, Pine | Deadly webcap: Spruce, Pine, Fir |
| Growth habit | Chanterelle: In groups | Deadly webcap: Solitary, In groups |
Same in both: season, size, flesh colour change, stem, nutrition type.