How to tell Salty mushroom from Destroying angel

The cap is 6–15 cm across and very fleshy. Young caps are hemispherical, then convex and flattened, and the margin stays inrolled for a long time.

The skin is white, cream or greyish, dry and smooth at first, often with brownish spots. With age it cracks into coarse brownish scales and furrows, so the cap looks like cracked earth. Mushrooms often come up already dirty, with sand or soil on the cap.

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, meaning they don't reach the stem, and very crowded. In young mushrooms they are greyish pink or pink, then reddish brown, and chocolate in mature ones. They are never white in a mature Agaricus.

The spore print is chocolate brown. A white print means it isn't an Agaricus.

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 4–10 cm tall and 2–4 cm thick, white, firm and solid. It's usually shorter than the cap is wide, which makes the mushroom look squat.

There is a single narrow, sleeve-like ring with an upturned edge; in young mushrooms it is thick and rubbery. There is no sac (volva) at the base. The base often sits deep in the soil, so dig the mushroom up whole to check it.

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 thick, firm and white. When cut or pressed it reddens, turning orange-red or reddish brown, sometimes vividly, sometimes slowly and only faintly. It never turns yellow. The taste is mild, slightly salty according to some.

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.

Descriptions of the smell vary: briny, fishy, unpleasant, and some authors also notice a hint of aniseed. That is where its German and French names meaning smelly mushroom come from. Treat the smell as a hint only: the reddening flesh, the pink to chocolate gills and the single ring decide. A strong smell of ink or carbolic points to the poisonous yellow stainer.

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.