How to tell Plums and custard from Sulphur tuft

Cap 2–7 cm across, conical or bell-shaped in young mushrooms, then flattened. Sulphur yellow or egg-yolk yellow, often orange-brown in the center. Surface smooth, moist, without scales. Margin uneven, in young mushrooms joined to the stem by a cobwebby veil.

Cap 4-12 cm across, in young specimens convex with an inrolled margin, becoming with age flattened and spreading, with a slightly wavy margin. The cap skin is golden-yellow, densely covered in tiny red-purple fibrous scales, especially in the center, where the scales can merge into a solid red field. Toward the margin the scales thin out and yellow dominates. In old fruit bodies it is mostly yellow-ochre with rusty spots.

Gills crowded, yellow or yellow-green at first, then darkening to gray-green or brownish olive — this is the key feature that distinguishes it from the edible honey fungus (whose gills are whitish or cream). Spore print purplish brown.

Gilled hymenophore — the gills are notched-attached to the stem, crowded, fleshy, distinctly golden-yellow (one of the brightest yellow hymenophores among the knights). Spore print white to cream — a hallmark of the genus Tricholomopsis (not pink, as in Rhodocollybia).

Stem thin, 4–10 cm tall, 0.4–0.8 cm thick, yellowish in the upper part, brownish or rusty below, fibrous. No ring, or a faint fibrous ring that soon disappears — the lack of a distinct ring sets it apart from honey fungus.

Stem 4-8 cm tall, 0.8-2 cm thick, cylindrical, hollow inside in older specimens. Color: yellowish to yellow-orange, the lower part covered in the same red-purple scales as the cap. Surface dry and fibrous. No ring.

Flesh yellowish, thin, bitter-tasting — very bitter when raw. But cooking removes the bitterness while the toxins remain, so in a finished dish the mushroom won't give itself away.

Flesh yellowish, thin and cottony in the cap, rather tough in the stem. No noticeable color change when cut. Smell faintly mushroomy, with a note of wood or rotten wood in mature specimens, taste indistinct or bitterish.

Smell mushroomy but indistinct, so it is of little help in identification.

Faintly mushroomy with woody notes, nothing distinctive. Not sharp.