Dangerous look-alikes
How to tell a psilocybin mushroom from something that can hurt you. The character that settles it on its own is marked decisive.
The fastest check is a spore print. Every deadly mushroom here prints rust-brown; every psilocybin species prints purple-brown or black. Leave a cap gill-side down on paper under a glass for a few hours. A rusty print means no, whatever else it looks like.
Every look-alike on Fungodex
Small brown mushrooms with ovoid to conical caps, a slender stem and brown spores are the usual source of mistakes. The list is ordered from most to least dangerous. Open an entry for the full side-by-side comparison, the toxin, and how fast symptoms start.
- Galerina marginataDeadly
The one that kills people who pick psilocybin mushrooms. It grows on wood and wood chips, in the same beds, at the same time of year, sometimes in the same square metre...
- Pholiotina rugosaDeadly
A small brown lawn mushroom with a ring, growing in exactly the grassy habitat people search for liberty caps. Formerly called Conocybe filaris, which is still the name...
- Cortinarius speciesDeadly
A very large genus of brown mushrooms, a few members of which contain orellanine and can cause kidney failure days to weeks later, often permanently. All have a cortina,...
- Inocybe speciesToxic
A large genus of small brown mushrooms with radially fibrous, often splitting caps. Some stain slightly bluish-green at the stem base, which has caught people out. The...
- Hypholoma fasciculareToxic
Grows in dense clusters on stumps and wood chips, in the same habitat and season as P. cyanescens, and its bright sulphur-yellow to greenish colouring is nothing like a...
- Panaeolina foeniseciiHarmless
Harmless, ubiquitous, and behind a large share of 'I ate them and nothing happened'. Worth learning so you stop picking it, and because if you mistook this for a...
How to rule things out
- Take a spore print first. A rust-brown or dull brown print is a hard stop. A purple-brown print does not clear a mushroom on its own: sulphur tuft also prints purple-brown.
- Check for blue or blue-green bruising where the mushroom is handled. None of the deadly look-alikes here bruise blue. Some toxic Inocybe stain bluish-green at the stem base, so bruising is supporting evidence only.
- Compare the habitat and the gills against the species page, not a single photograph. See the species database.
- If any check points to a look-alike, or any check is uncertain, stop. Passing these checks does not make a wild mushroom safe to eat. Cooking, drying or freezing does not remove amatoxins.
If someone may have eaten a deadly look-alike, contact your local poison control or emergency number immediately, even if they feel fine. Symptoms of some of these toxins arrive many hours late. Keep a sample if you can. Also see legal status by jurisdiction and our editorial policy.