How to tell Orange grisette from Fly agaric

The cap is 5 to 12 cm across, egg-shaped as it breaks out of the sac, then bell-shaped and convex, finally flat with a low, darker central bump.

It's yellow-orange to orange-brown with an apricot tinge in the centre, paler towards the edge. The surface is smooth and shiny, slightly sticky when wet, and almost never carries patches of veil. The edge is grooved like a comb.

The cap is 8–20 cm across, egg-shaped when young, then flattened-convex or almost flat. It's bright red or orange-red, fading to orange in old mushrooms, and covered with white or yellowish warts, the remnants of the universal veil (rain washes them off easily).

The gills are free, crowded, white to cream, with shorter gills of varying length in between.

The spore print is white.

The gills are free, crowded and white, and don't change colour. Spore print white. White gills combined with a red cap, a ring and a volva are a reliable set of amanita features.

The stem is 10 to 15 cm tall, up to 20 cm, and 1 to 2 cm thick, tapering upwards, hollow and brittle with age, pale to deep orange with a white-and-orange zig-zag pattern of soft scales, like snakeskin. There's no ring and no bulb.

At the base is a large, thick, loose white sac (volva), often lobed and hidden in the soil.

The stem is 8–18 cm tall and 1.5–2.5 cm thick, white and cylindrical, with a swollen, bulbous base. High on the stem there's a well-developed membranous ring, and at the base a volva that breaks up into several rings of warts on the bulb, often hidden in the soil.

The flesh is thin, white, soft and fragile, and doesn't change colour when cut.

The flesh is soft and white, yellowish under the cap skin, and doesn't change colour when cut. No distinctive smell. Even flesh with no smell and no sharp taste contains toxic isoxazoles.

The smell is faint: some sources call it sweet and mushroomy, others indistinct.

The smell is faint, neutral or slightly sweetish. That very lack of an off-putting smell is part of the fly agaric's “trap”: the mushroom looks attractive and its smell doesn't warn you off.