How to tell Porcelain fungus from Destroying angel

The cap is 2 to 8 cm across, occasionally up to 10 cm. It starts convex or hemispherical, then becomes broadly convex or flattened. Young caps are greyish or olive-grey, later white and translucent like porcelain, often with a faint ochre flush in the centre.

In wet weather it's coated in thick, clear slime, though young caps are almost dry. The margin is thin, and the gills show through it.

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 broad, very widely spaced, attached to the stem, white and translucent, and can turn slightly ochre with age.

The spore print is white and very abundant.

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 3 to 8 cm tall, occasionally up to 10 cm, and 3 to 10 mm thick, slim and tough, often curved, and slightly swollen at the base. It's white and finely lined above the ring, greyish and finely scaly below it.

The ring is white, membranous, prominent, slimy and grooved.

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 thin and white, turning brownish at the stem base with age.

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 and taste aren't distinctive.

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.