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🍄 Mushroom Guide

How to identify, use, preserve and grow mushrooms in the Illinois Valley — and how not to die doing it. The field guides, poisoning reports and growing manuals are in Mushrooms\ (Identification, Poisoning-Safety, Uses-Growing-Preserving). Wild-Plants\ also has the Forest Service Wild Edible Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest and death cap ID sheets.

⚠️ The rules that keep foragers alive

  1. Only eat a mushroom you have identified with complete certainty — every feature, including the spore print and the base of the stem. "Pretty sure" is how people die.
  2. No folk test works. Silver turning dark, a peeling cap, animals or insects eating it, soaking in salt water, cooking — none of these tell you anything. Cooking, drying, freezing and canning do not destroy the deadly toxins. (FDA Bad Bug Book, p. 218)
  3. The deadliest ones taste fine and make you sick late — 6 to 24 hours or more after eating. By then the toxin is already in your liver or kidneys.
  4. Dig up the whole mushroom — the cup or bulb at the base is what tells you it's a deadly Amanita. Never eat unopened "buttons" of gilled mushrooms; nobody can tell a deadly button from a safe one. (USDA FB 796, pp. 3, 6)
  5. Cook every wild mushroom thoroughly. Try a small amount of any new kind, eat in moderation, and keep one uncooked specimen in the fridge in case someone gets sick. (PNW/BC White Paper, p. 10)

🔎 How to identify a mushroom

📷 Have a photo? The plant and mushroom identifier (🔧 Tools tab) suggests names and flags deadly groups. Never eat a mushroom on its word: confirm every feature below, with a spore print.

Check all of these, every time:

Labeled drawing of a mushroom: cap with scales, gills underneath, a ring (annulus) on the stem, and a cup (volva) at the very base The parts to check every time; the cup (volva) sits at the very base and stays in the ground if you snap the stem (GTR-309, p. 10).

Four steps of a spore print: cut off the stem, lay the cap gills-down on half white and half dark paper, cover it with a glass for a few hours, then lift it and read the color Half white, half dark paper shows a print of any color; the color points to the family in the table below (a diagram drawn for this guide).

Spore print colors and what they point to:

Print color Examples here Note
White Deadly Amanitas, oyster, shiitake, matsutake, false chanterelle White alone proves nothing — the death cap is white-spored (Hard, p. 40; GTR-576, p. 35)
Yellowish white Pacific golden chanterelle (GTR-576, p. 38)
Pink to salmon Pluteus, Entoloma (Hard, p. 255)
Rusty to brown Deadly Galerina, Cortinarius webcaps, poison pax A brown print on a "shiitake" means Galerina (Cornell-UVM, p. 41)
Purple-brown Agaricus (meadow mushroom family) (Hard, p. 327)
Black Inky caps (Hard, p. 351)

Collecting, step by step:

  1. Carry a basket, a knife, a trowel and paper bags or wax paper. Plastic makes mushrooms sweat and rot. (Thomas, p. 29)
  2. Dig out the whole mushroom — don't snap the stem — so the base stays attached.
  3. Keep each kind in its own bag. Some poisons sicken people even from a sauce the mushroom was cooked in (Bad Bug Book, p. 218), so one stray deadly cap in a basket of edibles is a real danger.
  4. Note the tree, the ground, the date. Take a photo of the spot.
  5. At home, sort on a clean table, make spore prints, and throw out anything you can't name with certainty — and wash your hands.
  6. Learn from someone who knows. CDC's advice after the 2016 California outbreak: have wild mushrooms checked by an experienced mycologist before eating (CDC MMWR 2017, p. 4). In Switzerland, where trained checkers inspect foragers' baskets, none of the checked mushrooms caused a hospitalization in 15 years (White Paper, p. 11).

📚 Go deeper: Wild Edible Mushrooms of the PNW (USFS PNW-GTR-309) — labeled drawing of mushroom parts and the life cycle; Thomas Field Book — how to collect, and a key by spore color; Atkinson — making spore prints, many photos. Pictures: Mushroom.

☠️ The killers that grow around here

Mushroom What it looks like What it does
Death cap (Amanita phalloides) Greenish-olive to yellowish or white cap, white gills, white ring, bulb in a cup at the base. Under oaks and filberts (hazelnuts), wet season. Liver failure. One cap can kill an adult. Poisoned 5 Oregonians in 1988; 4 needed liver transplants (Pinson et al., Am J Surg 1990).
Western destroying angel (Amanita ocreata) All-white, cup at the base, under oaks. Oregon cases on record (NAMA registry, p. 5). Liver and kidney failure.
Deadly Galerina (Galerina marginata) Small, brown, on rotting wood, rusty-brown spore print, often a thin ring. Easily mistaken for "little brown" edibles (photo). Same toxin as death cap.
Deadly parasols (small Lepiota, e.g. L. subincarnata) Small, scaly-capped, white gills, on soil. Same toxin as death cap.
Amanita smithiana White, shaggy; grows right next to matsutake in our tanoak forests. Brittle flesh. Kidney failure, 2–5 days later (White Paper, p. 6).
Deadly webcaps (Cortinarius, orellanine; e.g. C. rubellus) Orange to red-brown, dry, fibrous cap, rusty gills, under conifers (photos). Kidney failure, 3–14 days later.
False morels (Gyromitra) Brain-like or saddle-shaped cap, not pitted, chambered stem (photo). Vomiting, seizures, liver damage; fumes from cooking can poison the cook.

(CDC 2017 death-cap report; NAMA poisoning registry; PNW/BC White Paper; USFS reports)

Death cap checklist (BC Forests profile, pp. 5–7; color photos; young and open caps; old photo: cup, ring, scaly stem): cap 4–16 cm (1½–6 in), usually olive or greenish but can be pale brown, yellow or white, with a satiny sheen when dry · white gills · a skirt-like ring · a loose, sac-like cup at the base, often below ground · near hardwoods, especially planted ones. Fruits in fall, but in summer where lawns or orchards are watered (BCCDC briefing, p. 8).

Old photographs of death caps: a whole "egg" and young and grown death caps dug up whole, each with a sac-like cup around the base of the stem Death caps dug up whole: the egg stage, and the loose cup that stays around the base, often below ground (Gussow & Odell, p. 47).

Old drawing of an Amanita growing from its egg: eggs in the ground, an egg cut open showing the cap and gills already formed inside, and grown mushrooms with a veil on the stem and the cup labeled "poison cup" at the base An Amanita breaks out of its egg and leaves the cup at the base; cut open, the egg already shows a cap and gills, while a puffball is solid white all through (Thomas, p. 43).

Poisoning timeline — deadly Amanita, Galerina, Lepiota: nothing for 6–24 hours, then violent vomiting and diarrhea, then a false recovery around day 1–2, then liver (and kidney) failure at day 3–5. 10–20% die even with hospital care. (CDC MMWR 2017, p. 3) Sources differ on the death rate: BC public health says 10–30% even with treatment (BCCDC, p. 5); NAMA's records show about 11% of people who got sick (NAMA 2018–20, p. 3); FDA says 50–90% for people who reach care late, about 10% for those treated almost at once (Bad Bug Book, p. 219). Without a hospital, expect the worst.

When did the symptoms start? A quick guide (Bad Bug Book, pp. 219–221; White Paper, p. 6):

Symptoms begin Likely cause Usual outcome
15 min – 2 hours: nausea, cramps, diarrhea Many "stomach upset" mushrooms Recover in hours to 2–3 days; replace fluids
15–30 min: heavy sweating, tears, drooling Muscarine (Clitocybe, Inocybe) Recover in about 2 hours
1–2 hours: drowsy, confused, excited Fly agaric (old photo), panther cap Recover after several hours
About 6 hours: bloated, bad headache, vomiting False morel (gyromitrin), Verpa Recover in 2–6 days; some deaths from liver failure
6–24+ hours: violent vomiting and watery diarrhea Amatoxin — death cap, Galerina, small Lepiota False recovery, then liver failure; often fatal
2–5 days: kidney trouble Amanita smithiana Kidney failure
2 days – 3 weeks: burning thirst, peeing a lot, then kidney failure Orellanine — deadly webcaps Months to recover, or death
½–2 hours after drinking alcohol, within 3 days of eating: flushing, racing heart Inky cap (coprine) Passes in a few hours

The rule this table teaches: if symptoms start 6 hours or more after the meal, treat it as deadly until proven otherwise (rule of thumb from the table above).

📚 Go deeper: FDA Bad Bug Book, mushroom chapter — each poison type, onset and outcome; PNW/BC White Paper — color photos of our six deadliest; BC Forests death cap profile — death cap photos, look-alikes and host trees; NAMA Cortinarius rubellus report — the kidney-destroying webcap.

🚑 If someone may have eaten a bad mushroom

📚 Go deeper: CDC MMWR 2017 death cap outbreak — 14 real cases, hour by hour; NAMA 2018–2020 summary — what treatments work and which don't; BCCDC Wild Mushrooms May Be Poisonous — one-page symptoms and what to do.

🧺 Good edibles and their look-alikes

📷 Have a photo? The plant and mushroom identifier (🔧 Tools tab) suggests names and flags deadly groups. Never eat a mushroom on its word: confirm every feature below, with a spore print.

Edible How to tell it Watch out for
Chanterelle (late summer–fall, under Douglas-fir and tanoak) Golden; blunt, shallow, forked ridges that don't scrape off, running down a solid stem; grows from soil (photo). False chanterelle (thin, crowded true gills that scrape off, white spore print); jack-o'-lantern (sharp true gills, big clumps on wood or buried roots, poisonous; picture); poison pax (gills stain brown, poisonous); scaly vase chanterelle (hollow, scaly, red-orange vase — stomach upset; photo). (USFS PNW-GTR-576, p. 35; GTR-309, p. 18)
Hedgehog (fall through late spring) Soft spines/teeth underneath instead of gills (photo). No poisonings reported. Nothing dangerous looks like it once you turn it over. (GTR-309, p. 22)
King bolete / spring king Fat stem, sponge of pores underneath that peels away from the cap; pores white when young and don't bruise blue (photo). Avoid boletes with red or orange pores (like the red-pored bolete) or that bruise blue fast; eat small amounts at first. (GTR-309, p. 17)
Morels (spring; burn areas the year after a fire) Pitted, honeycomb cap joined to the stem, hollow from top to bottom when sliced lengthwise (true vs. false morel vs. Verpa). False morels (Gyromitra, brain-like, stuffed stem; photo) and Verpa (cap hangs free like a thimble, attached only at the top). Always cook morels thoroughly — raw or undercooked morels killed 2 people in Montana in 2023. (USFS PNW-GTR-710, p. 69; CDC 2024, p. 1)
Oyster Shell-shaped caps, white gills running down to a short side stem, on dead hardwood (cottonwood, alder) (photo). Pale angel wings on conifer wood — skip them.
Chicken of the woods Bright sulfur-yellow to orange shelves, pores not gills, on oak and other trunks. Upsets some people's stomachs — cook well, eat a little the first time.
Matsutake White to tan, spicy-cinnamon smell, stringy flesh that peels like string cheese (photo; more). Amanita smithiana grows beside it — brittle flesh, no spicy smell (photo, Fig. 1E). (USFS PNW-GTR-412, p. 13)
Puffballs Round, no stem or gills. Slice top to bottom: must be pure white and solid like marshmallow (giant puffball; giant puffball photos). Any outline of a cap and gills inside = an Amanita button (sliced puffball vs. sliced death-cap button; death-cap "egg"). Yellow, brown or purple inside = discard (e.g. an earthball). (BC Forests, p. 6)
Lobster mushroom Bright orange-red crust over a deformed mushroom (photo). Must be cooked.

More on the tricky ones:

Season calendar (timing shifts with rain and elevation):

Season What to look for Source
Early spring Morels; on burns, the first spring after a fall fire, fewer the second year GTR-710, pp. 26, 28
Spring Spring king bolete White Paper, p. 13
Late summer – fall Chanterelles (timing follows the rain) GTR-309, p. 18
Fall rains Matsutake (soon after the rains start), king bolete at low elevation GTR-309, pp. 17, 27
Fall – late spring Hedgehogs GTR-309, p. 22
Late Aug – early Nov (earlier where watered; BC data) Death cap season BCCDC, p. 8

Burn morels after a wildfire: in western Oregon's mountains, morels fruit the first year after logging or wildfire (GTR-710, p. 102). Skip spots stained with orange fire-retardant and ground near highways — morels soak up metals, and one batch picked 1,500 feet from a highway held worrying lead (GTR-710, pp. 70–71). Wild mushrooms also took up radioactive fallout after Chernobyl (GTR-710, p. 70) — see the Nuclear Fallout guide.

📚 Go deeper: Chanterelle Mushrooms (USFS PNW-GTR-576) — key separating true chanterelles from look-alikes; Morels of Western North America (PNW-GTR-710) — morels, false morels, toxins and drying; American Matsutake (PNW-GTR-412) — our tanoak matsutake and its deadly neighbor; PNW/BC White Paper edible list — which PNW species are widely eaten and their known risks.

🫙 Cooking, drying and storing

📚 Go deeper: OSU Preserving Mushrooms SP 50-919 — freezing, drying and why only button mushrooms can be canned; Morels of Western North America — drying with and without power; McIlvaine recipe chapter — old-time cooking and drying methods.

🪵 Growing your own

Shiitake details:

A shiitake log seen from the side with holes in staggered rows making diamonds, a cut-open hole filled with spawn and sealed with wax, and the end of a 4-inch log with four rows around it Cornell's spacing: holes 7/16 in wide and 1¼ in deep, 3 in apart, rows staggered into diamonds, one row per inch of log width; the USDA note spaces them 6 in (a diagram drawn for this guide).

Three old drawings of shiitake logs stacked in a shady laying yard: criss-cross, lean-to and X pattern Three ways to stack logs in the shady laying yard (Agroforestry Note 13, p. 3).

Oyster details (UF SS662, pp. 2–4; bags as they colonize and fruit): incubate filled bags in the dark at 75–77 °F and 80–90% humidity until white all through (mycelium, 2–3 weeks); then give them light, about 68 °F, 90% humidity and fresh air. Pick clusters by twisting. Expect 2–4 more flushes.

If this goes wrong:

Problem What to do
Logs haven't fruited after 18 months Check the log ends for white mycelium. Force with a 24-hour cold soak once nights average above 50 °F (Cornell-UVM, p. 32).
First flush was tiny Normal. Try again about two months later (p. 32).
Slugs eating the crop Pick slugs by flashlight at night, let chickens into the yard by day, put gravel under fruiting logs (p. 38).
Green or black mold on logs Competing fungi. Logs often still fruit; pull out badly infected ones so spores don't spread (p. 28).
Mold in an oyster bag Throw out badly contaminated bags; a partly contaminated one may still give one flush (UF SS662, p. 4).
Oyster bag is white but won't fruit It needs a cooler spot, light, high humidity and fresh air (UF SS662, p. 3).

📚 Go deeper: Cornell-UVM Log-Based Shiitake — every step from cutting logs to harvest, with growers' tips; USDA Agroforestry Note 13 — shiitake, oyster and lion's mane on logs in a woodlot; UF Grow Your Own Oyster Mushrooms — oysters on straw in bags.

🌿 Medicinal mushrooms

Turkey tail, reishi, lion's mane and shiitake have real research behind them as add-ons to treatment — turkey-tail extract (PSK) is a prescribed cancer add-on in Japan — but most evidence is from lab and animal studies. They are not cures. Turkey tail and reishi are traditionally simmered for hours as tea. (VA Mycomedicinals, pp. 1–3)

📚 Go deeper: VA Mycomedicinals — what the research shows for turkey tail, reishi, lion's mane and shiitake; Agroforestry Note 13 — growing lion's mane on logs.

The old mushroom books here (1895–1928) are great for pictures, descriptions and recipes, but some of their safety advice is wrong and has killed people: Marshall's Mushroom Book lists false morels as edible, Thomas says the parasol has no poisonous look-alike, and USDA FB 796 recommends raw mushrooms and old first aid. Hard (1908) also calls a brown false morel edible (p. 517), and the poisoning treatments in Atkinson and McIlvaine are long outdated. They also miss most western killers. Use the modern files in Poisoning-Safety and this guide for anything about safety.

🖼️ Pictures & diagrams

Look before you try it. 🖼️ = drawings in the books on this drive; 📷 = photos in the offline Wikipedia. The old books (Hard, Gussow & Odell, Thomas, Atkinson, USDA FB 796) are here for their pictures only — see the warning above.

Mushroom parts and spore prints

The killers

Edibles beside their look-alikes

Matsutake country

Growing and medicinal mushrooms

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