How to tell Common ink cap from Magpie inkcap

The cap is egg-shaped or bell-shaped at first, 4-8 cm tall and 3-7 cm wide, opening up with age. It's grey or grey-brown, sometimes with an olive tinge, and darker in the centre. The surface has distinctive radial ribs and grooves, with small scales in the centre. In old mushrooms it blackens and dissolves.

The young cap is egg-shaped, 5 to 8 cm tall, and completely covered in a white, sometimes greyish or cream, felty veil. As it opens it becomes bell-shaped, 4 to 8 cm across and occasionally up to 10 cm, and the veil breaks into separate white patches on a dark brown to almost black, glossy background.

With age the margin rolls upwards and dissolves into black liquid from the edge inwards.

The gills are very crowded, thin and free. They're white in young mushrooms, then turn grey, pinkish and finally black before digesting themselves. The spore print is black.

The gills are free and very crowded. They start white, turn pinkish or wine-tinged, then grey and black, and finally dissolve into black ink.

The spore print is black.

The stem is 8-15 cm tall and 0.5-1.5 cm thick, cylindrical, white and hollow. There's no distinct ring, though there may be a thin ring-like thickening near the base. The surface is smooth or has barely noticeable down.

The stem is 10 to 20 cm tall, sometimes up to 30 cm when it grows up through deep leaf litter, and 0.5 to 1.5 cm thick. It's white, hollow and fragile, tapering slightly upwards, with a small woolly swelling at the base.

There's usually no ring, but the shaggy inkcap often loses its ring too, so the dark cap skin is the better guide.

The flesh in the cap is thin and white to greyish. In old mushrooms it quickly blackens and digests itself. Cut a young one and the colour barely changes.

The flesh is thin, fragile, white and watery, and doesn't change colour when cut.

A faint, pleasant mushroomy smell. The taste is mild and unremarkable.

The smell is sometimes unpleasant, of tar, mothballs or carbolic, and sometimes not distinctive. Don't taste it.