How to Identify Poisonous Mushrooms in Prydniprovia Forests: Death Cap and More
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Poisonous mushrooms are not numerous in the forests of the Dnipropetrovsk region, but you need to know them well so you don't drop a deadly death cap into your basket instead of a tasty champignon (more: How to grow champignon mushrooms), or a bitter bile bolete instead of a porcini mushroom. Below are descriptions of the poisonous mushrooms you may encounter.
Most poisonous species belong to the gilled mushrooms. Among the tube-bearing (boletes), only one is considered poisonous — the Satan's bolete — and it is extremely rare in our forests. Poisonous gilled mushrooms, by contrast, number around 30 species, and all of them grow in the forests of the Dnieper region. 
Keep in mind, too, that any edible mushroom that has gone flabby or sat unprocessed for too long can cause severe poisoning. For this reason, only young, fresh, firm mushrooms are fit to eat.
What does the death cap look like, and why is it so dangerous?
The most poisonous and dangerous mushroom is the death cap. Every part of it is toxic — the stem, the cap, and even the spores. The poisonous compounds in this most dangerous of mushrooms cannot be neutralized by any form of processing.
The gills are crowded and always white. The stem is white, slightly greenish at the base, 7–12 centimetres tall, with a club-shaped thickening surrounded by a white rim. The flesh is white and has no smell. We advise you not to test the taste.
Where does the Satan's bolete grow?
Whereas the death cap is a small, unremarkable and common mushroom, the Satan's bolete is its complete opposite.
The spore-bearing layer is spongy and yellow, turning red-olive with age, and stains blue when touched. The stem is thick and yellow-red. The flesh is white, turns red when cut and then blue, and has a pleasant smell. The Satan's bolete grows from July through September in oak or mixed forest that includes oak.
How can you recognise poisonous fly agarics?
Anyone who has ever walked through an autumn forest has surely spotted bright, ornate mushrooms that look like Christmas decorations. These are fly agarics. They can rightly be called an adornment of the forest, yet these beauties are very dangerous. Their poison acts almost immediately, causing suffocation, convulsions and nausea. For a person in poor health, fly agaric poisoning can be fatal.
The cap of a fly agaric may be coloured greenish or pure white (the destroying angel and the death cap), grey, greenish-brown or grey-brown (the panther cap), pale yellow (the false death cap), or red (the red fly agaric).
The cap measures 6 to 20 centimetres across. Sometimes white flakes sit on its surface. In the past, fly agarics were used as a means of combating various insects, and in folk medicine as a remedy for disorders of the nervous system. Even today they are used in homeopathy.
The poisonous fibrecap, Inocybe patouillardii
Besides the poisonous mushrooms already described — fly agarics, the death cap and false honey fungus (more: Honey fungus mushrooms. Photos) — our forests hold several more species of decidedly unappealing and, moreover, poisonous gilled mushrooms. They have thin stems and caps, with almost no flesh.
In the specialist mushroom literature they are called Inocybe and Clitocybe (though some of the latter are edible). Such mushrooms grow in deciduous and coniferous forests as well as in plantations, and appear in May.
The gills are thin, dense, whitish or beige, turning various shades of brown with age. The stem is up to one and a half centimetres in diameter, cylindrical, sometimes bent, smooth and the colour of the cap. The flesh is delicately white, does not darken when cut — or turns faintly pink — and has a pleasant fruity smell. It is found from May through August in deciduous forests, plantations and parks.
The peppery bolete
The flesh of the peppery bolete is yellowish and sometimes reddens when broken (in the slippery jack it is white; in the bay bolete it turns blue). And finally, as its name readily suggests, the peppery bolete tastes fiercely bitter and peppery — so much so that black pepper might seem a treat by comparison. The peppery bolete grows singly, in the same places as slippery jacks.
By carefully studying these descriptions of poisonous mushrooms, foragers can protect themselves from the danger of confusing them with good, edible mushrooms.
