How to tell Vittadini's lepidella from Death cap

The cap is 7–15 cm across, sometimes up to 18. Young caps are globular or hemispherical, then convex and finally almost flat. The colour is white, cream or ivory, turning ochre with age. The skin is dry and peels easily.

The whole cap is covered in remnants of the universal veil: dense warts, thickest in the centre, and scales that overlap like tiles towards the edge. On young caps the warts are pointed and pyramid-shaped; on older ones they're flatter and cream-yellow or greyish ochre. The edge overhangs the gills and carries hanging scraps of veil; it isn't grooved.

The death cap's cap is 5–15 cm across, hemispherical when young, then opening out flat.

Its colour ranges from olive green and yellowish green to greyish and almost white, which is exactly what makes it tricky to identify. The surface is smooth and a little slimy in wet weather, with a characteristic pattern of darker fibres radiating from the centre. The margin is even, with no striations.

The gills are free, not reaching the stem, crowded and broad, with short gills in between. They start white and become cream, sometimes with a greyish or greenish tint, but they never turn pink or brown like a field mushroom's.

The spore print is white to cream. Under the microscope the spores are amyloid, turning blue-black in iodine.

The gills are crowded, thin and free, meaning they don't touch the stem. They're white and may turn creamy with age, sometimes with a faint pinkish tinge, but they never turn chocolate brown.

It never has the chocolate-brown gills of a mature Agaricus. The gap between gills and stem is clear. In young mushrooms a white, membranous veil covers the gills completely.

The stem is 8–16 cm tall, sometimes 20, and 1.5–3 cm thick, white, cylindrical, slightly narrower at the top, firm and solid. It's smooth above the ring, and below it, right from the base, it's covered in bands of pointed, upturned scales. The scales go brownish with age and handling.

The ring sits high, just under the cap. It's broad, membranous, double and white, with no grooves: smooth on top and fluffy underneath. It may yellow slightly when touched.

The base roots into the soil. There's no sack-like volva of the kind a death cap has: the veil leaves only scales like those on the stem, and they're visible only on young mushrooms.

The stem is slender, 7–15 cm tall and 1–2 cm thick. It's cylindrical and swells at the base into a characteristic club-shaped bulb wrapped in a membranous, sac-like volva. That volva is the main diagnostic feature.

It's whitish green, often with a faint, banded snakeskin pattern. A well-developed white ring, left over from the veil, hangs in the upper third. Below the ring the surface is faintly scaly.

The flesh is white, thick and firm. It hardly changes when cut, apart from yellowing slightly at the stem base. The taste is mild and sweetish.

The flesh is white and doesn't change colour when cut, and that's the treacherous part: none of the safety signs foragers usually rely on work here. It's thin and brittle in the cap, thicker and firmer at the base of the stem.

It doesn't darken in the air, not after a minute and not after an hour. Don't let "lovely white flesh" reassure you: the white flesh of the death cap is exactly where amanitins are most concentrated.

The smell is faint and pleasant; Italian mycologists liken it to clean laundry. It almost disappears with age, and old specimens can smell unpleasant, with a garlicky note from the gills.

Fresh, it has a faint smell that's easy to miss, and young ones barely smell at all. Mature mushrooms pick up a slightly sickly-sweet note, like wilted honey or stale dough.

That smell isn't strong enough to warn an inexperienced forager. Like other poisonous amanitas (the fly agaric, the panther cap), the death cap smells faint and nondescript, so it gives you no warning at all, which is one more treacherous trait. Only rotting mushrooms smell any stronger.