Common Edible Mushrooms

White Spore Print
GENUS Amanita
Those who eat mushrooms are again warned that to learn the
common poisonous species and avoid them and to eat all others is
risking serious illness or death! The edibility of all species is not
known. The only safe procedure is to learn thoroughly a few of
the common edible ones and to avoid all others. The purpose of including
some of the more common poisonous kinds in this book
is to show how these resemble, and how they can be distinguished
from, the common edible kinds.
The genus Amanita, named for Amanos, a mountain in Asia
Minor, contains the more common deadly species of mushrooms.
These may be identified by the following characteristics. Learn
them well!
1. White spores.
2. Gills that are free from the stem; that is, they extend almost
to the stem but do not touch it.
3. A ring around the upper part of the stem. In newly expanded
specimens this is always visible and usually prominent,
but it often collapses, withers, and disappears in older specimens.
The stem should be examined very closely for evidence of it.
4. A cup, or volva, surrounding the base of the stem. In some
species this is beneath the surface of the ground or buried in leaf
litter or grass and thus will be missed unless one carefully digs up
the entire stem. Moreover, this cup also withers and almost disappears
with age.
To make identification even more difficult, the volva, instead
of being always a definite cup-like structure enclosing the base of
the stem, is sometimes merely a series of partial and inconspicuous
rings on the swollen base of the stem, permitting confusion with
the genus Lepiota and even with young specimens of Agaricus.
The prominent and movable ring on the stem of Lepiota procera
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