Dangerous mistake
Common puffball or death cap? How to tell them apart
Common puffball is an edible mushroom, while the death cap is a deadly poisonous mushroom. Compare the two mushrooms point by point.
Young amanitas still in their veil (“eggs”) look like white balls. A vertical cross-section of an amanita shows the outline of the cap, gills and stem; a puffball is uniformly white inside. Never pick without cutting in half.
Feature by feature
| Feature | Common puffball | Death cap |
|---|---|---|
| Edibility | Edible | Deadly poisonous |
| Cap | Fruit body pear- to club-shaped, 3–8 cm tall, 2–6 cm wide; white when young, then ochre to brown; covered with blunt spines that fall off easily, leaving a net-like pattern; when mature it opens with a pore at the top. | 5–15 cm, hemispherical, then expanded; greenish, olive, yellowish-green to white (white form), with darker, radially innate fibrils; smooth, usually without patches, margin not striate. |
| Under the cap | No gills – spores are produced inside the fruit body (the gleba): white when young, then yellow, olive and brown, finally powdery. | Gills always white (slightly cream-greenish in old specimens), crowded, free; in young specimens covered by a white veil. |
| Stem | A pseudostem (subgleba) – the narrowed, sterile lower part of the fruit body. | 8–15 cm, whitish with a yellowish-greenish zigzag pattern; a distinct, hanging white ring; base bulbous, surrounded by a tall, free-standing, white, sac-like volva (often hidden in the soil). |
| Flesh | White, uniform and elastic in young specimens; with age turns yellow, olive and becomes a powder of spores. | White, slightly yellow-green under the cap cuticle; does not change colour when broken. |
| Smell and taste | Smell and taste distinct, mushroomy. Spore mass olive-brown. | Mature fruit bodies smell sweetish and sickly (like artificial honey), young ones mild. Never taste. |
| Habitat | Very common; on the ground in broadleaf and coniferous forests, in scrub, on heaths, rarely on lawns and rotten wood; singly or in groups. | Common in broadleaf and mixed forests, especially oak and beech woods, less often in coniferous forests; also in parks and grassy areas near trees. Likes fertile soils, neutral to alkaline. |
| Season | June, July, August, September, October, November, December | June, July, August, September, October, November |
How to recognise it: common puffball
- White, pear-shaped fruit body covered with spines that fall off
- No cap and no gills
- Cut in half when young: uniformly white flesh
- When mature, puffs out brown spores from a pore at the top
How to recognise it: death cap
- Gills white throughout the life of the fruit body (field mushrooms have pink, then brown gills)
- Sac-like volva at the bulbous stem base – dig up the whole mushroom to see it
- Hanging ring below the cap
- Greenish cap with radial fibrils (can also be white)
- White spore print; sweetish, sickly smell of older fruit bodies
Safety rule
Never eat a mushroom identified only from a website, a photo or an app. Show any doubtful specimen to a certified mushroom inspector at the sanepid (state sanitary inspection); in season the advice points are free. Do not give wild-picked mushrooms to children.
The golden rules of foraging →Frequently asked questions
Common puffball or death cap: how can you tell them apart?
Young amanitas still in their veil (“eggs”) look like white balls. A vertical cross-section of an amanita shows the outline of the cap, gills and stem; a puffball is uniformly white inside. Never pick without cutting in half.
Death cap: what to do if you have eaten it?
Call 112 at once or go to A&E (SOR), and take any leftover mushrooms with you. Amatoxins (mainly α-amanitin) and phallotoxins – phalloides (cytotoxic) syndrome. First symptoms (vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal pain) only after approx. 8–16 h (on average approx. 12 h), earlier in children; then a deceptive improvement, and after 2–6 days damage to the liver and kidneys; death usually after several days. Hospital treatment, sometimes a liver transplant. At any suspicion go to hospital immediately and keep the mushroom remains.
Sources
- Wikipedia (pl): Purchawka chropowata
- grzyby.pl (atlas M. Snowarskiego): Lycoperdon perlatum
- First Nature: Lycoperdon perlatum
- Wikipedia (pl): Muchomor zielonawy
- grzyby.pl (M. Snowarski): Amanita phalloides
- First Nature: Amanita phalloides, Deathcap
Last checked: 9 November 2026. Spotted a mistake? Write to us.