Porcini, parasols, honey mushrooms, chicken of the woods — peak season's best finds all have doubles. Some ruin dinner. Some end up in the ER. Can you tell them apart?
Six pairs that are fruiting right now. Identify the one you'd want in your basket.
White pores aging olive-yellow, fine white net on upper stem, mild nutty taste
Pores turn pinkish with age, coarse dark netting down the stem
Red-orange pores, stem flushed red, flesh stains blue when cut
White-to-olive pores, no color change when cut, brown cap like a bread roll
Bright orange shelves with yellow pore surface, growing on oak
Velvety brown-and-yellow rosette at the base of a conifer
Growing in a lawn fairy ring, gills age greenish, GREEN spore print
Tall snakeskin-patterned stem, movable double-edged ring, WHITE spore print
Dense cluster, honey-colored, WHITE spore print, thick cottony ring
Small brown caps on rotting wood, RUSTY-BROWN spore print, thin fragile ring
Cut in half: a faint outline of a cap and gills hides inside
Cut in half: pure white and featureless all the way through, like marshmallow
In the field, don't guess from memory — pin the find with a photo and check it against the offline lookalike guide before anything reaches the basket.
GPS-pin the find with a photo, compare it against a 200+ species offline database with lookalike warnings, and come back to the spot every season. Free, works with zero cell service.