Amanita family

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Fungi in the amanita family are responsible for most of the serious incidents of mushroom poisoning, because several species are deadly and they can be confused with ordinary field mushrooms. All that occur here have a white stem and gills and a 'universal veil', that is a white skin covering the entire mushroom when young, remaining as fragments on the cap and a cup (the 'volva') at the base as they grow. Death Cap (amanita phalloides) is the most dangerous, and others including the similar Panther Cap are poisonous also.

The Fly Agaric is the familar red-capped mushroom traditionally thought of as the 'toadstool'. (The terms mushroom and toadstool have no precise scientific meaning: some fungi are edible and some are poisonous and you have to identify the species to know which are which.) Other fungi in the family are edible, such as The Blusher, but even this needs to be cooked in a particular way and can easily be confused with poisonous species.