How to tell Vittadini's lepidella from Destroying angel

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 cap is 5-12 cm across, egg-shaped when young, then bell-shaped or conical, often slightly lopsided, and finally spreading with a boss. It is entirely white or creamy white, slightly yellowish in the centre in old mushrooms. The surface is smooth and slightly sticky in wet weather. The mature cap has no scales, no warts and no veil remnants (unlike the fly agaric or Caesar's mushroom).

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 white and free (not attached to the stem) and moderately crowded. The spore print is white. As in the rest of Amanita section Phalloideae, to which this species belongs, the gills stay white and free even in mature mushrooms, unlike those of Agaricus.

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 8-15 cm tall and 1-2 cm thick, cylindrical, long and slender, with a sac-like volva at the base (a remnant of the universal veil that looks like an eggshell). It is entirely white. Near the top is a white membranous ring, firm in young mushrooms and sometimes gone in old ones. The stem surface often has thin white flaky scales and fibres.

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 firm and entirely white and doesn't change colour when cut, like many edible mushrooms, so that tells you nothing. The smell is like radish in a very young mushroom, then turns unpleasant and sickly sweet, sometimes with a hint of chlorine, hence the epithet "stinking" in its Ukrainian name. In young mushrooms the smell is still faint, so don't rely on it as the only sign.

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.

Faint, unpleasant and sickly sweet, sometimes with a hint of chlorine, especially in old mushrooms and when the flesh is damaged. It tells you nothing about safety: the smell develops only with time, and a young mushroom with no distinct smell can still end up in the basket and cause fatal poisoning.