Grey spotted amanitaAmanita excelsa

Is the grey spotted amanita (Amanita excelsa) edible? Opinions differ: some guides say it's safe once thoroughly cooked, others advise against picking it at all, and we don't recommend it either. It isn't considered deadly in itself. The trouble is that it looks very like the poisonous panther cap, and raw it contains substances that can damage red blood cells. It's also called the European false blusher or false panthercap, and many books list its stocky form separately as Amanita spissa or A. excelsa var. spissa; whether that's a separate species is still debated, but the features that matter for safety are the same.

How to recognise it. The cap is 6–15 cm across and grey-brown, anything from ash grey to hazel brown, darker in the centre and slightly sticky when wet. It carries flat grey patches and flakes of veil that rain washes off easily. The cap edge is smooth, with no grooves. The gills are white and crowded. The stem is stout, 8–12 cm tall and finely lined above the ring. The ring is large, white or greyish, hangs high on the stem and has fine grooves on its upper side, as if someone had run a comb over it. The base swells into a turnip-shaped bulb with two or three faint belts of grey flakes, but no sack and no sharp rim. The flesh is white, greyish under the cap skin, and doesn't turn red when cut.

It forms mycorrhiza with spruce, beech, fir, pine and oak and grows in conifer, mixed and broadleaf woodland across Europe, often along woodland edges, singly or in small groups. It's common in Britain and in Central Europe. It's one of the earlier amanitas: the first appear in late spring, it's most frequent in summer, and in a mild year it carries on until late autumn.

Grey spotted amanita vs panther cap. Check several features together and dig the whole mushroom out, because the most important ones are at the base. The panther cap's veil spots are pure white and small, like dots; the grey spotted amanita's are grey and flat. The panther cap's edge is finely grooved; the grey spotted amanita's is smooth. The panther cap's ring is smooth, smaller and lower down; the grey spotted amanita's is large, high and grooved on top. The panther cap's bulb has a narrow rim with woolly belts above it; the grey spotted amanita's bulb merges gradually into the stem. The panther cap is also slimmer. Rain washes the spots off both, so spot colour on its own proves nothing.

Grey spotted amanita vs blusher. The blusher's ring is grooved too, so the ring won't separate these two. Cut the flesh instead: the blusher turns pink to wine red where it's cut, at the stem base and in insect holes, and often has reddish stains on the cap and stem. The grey spotted amanita stays white.

Other look-alikes. The death cap has an olive or greenish-grey cap with fine radiating fibres, usually without veil patches, a smooth ring and a large white sack at the base; if the mushroom was cut off with a knife and the sack left in the ground, a greyish death cap is easy to mistake for this species. The grey veiled amanita has a purplish tinge to the cap, a ring that collapses against the stem and an abruptly set-off bulb.

Can you eat it? German guides and Wild Food UK say a well-cooked grey spotted amanita isn't poisonous, though it doesn't taste of much. First Nature and others advise against it, because the cost of a mistake is panther cap poisoning. Never eat it raw or undercooked: haemolysins have been found in it. If drowsiness, confusion, unsteadiness, agitation, delirium or seizures start after a mushroom meal (usually within half an hour to an hour and a half), call 112 (999 in the UK) at once and don't try to make the person vomit. If there's any chance a death cap was eaten, call straight away without waiting for symptoms: they only begin 6–24 hours later. So vomiting and diarrhoea that start six hours or more after a mushroom meal can mean a death cap or another amatoxin mushroom from the same basket: call 112 (999 in the UK) straight away, even if you start to feel better. Keep any leftovers or photos.