How to tell Grey spotted amanita from Death cap

The cap is 6–15 cm across, usually about 10. Young caps are hemispherical, then convex, and finally almost flat. The colour is grey-brown, from ash grey to hazel brown, darker in the centre. The surface is slightly sticky when wet and silky when dry.

It carries remnants of the universal veil: flat grey or dirty white patches and mealy flakes, not the pure white raised dots of the panther cap. They rub off with a finger and wash off in rain, so old caps can be almost bare. The edge is smooth, without grooves.

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 white, becoming cream or greyish white with age, and crowded, with short gills in between. They are free or only narrowly attached to the stem.

The spore print is white. Under the microscope the spores are amyloid, turning blue-black in iodine, while the panther cap's are not; that isn't something you can check in the wood.

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 8–12 cm tall, sometimes 15, and 1.5–3 cm thick, white or pale grey, and stockier than the panther cap's. It is finely lined above the ring and covered in whitish flakes arranged in bands below it.

The ring is large, membranous, white or greyish, and hangs high, just under the cap. Its upper surface has fine grooves running towards the gills. The panther cap's ring is smooth and lower.

The base swells into a turnip-shaped bulb that merges gradually into the stem, with two or three faint belts of grey flakes. There is no loose sack like the death cap's and no sharp rim like the panther cap's. You'll only see this if you dig the mushroom out rather than cutting it.

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 and firm, greyish just under the cap skin. It doesn't turn pink or red when cut, which separates it from the blusher. Some authors note that it darkens slightly on cutting. The taste is unremarkable and slightly sweet, turning radishy in older specimens.

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, often with a note of radish or raw turnip, and some specimens hardly smell at all. Don't rely on smell: the panther cap's bruised flesh also smells faintly of radish.

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.