Key Features:

• Cap pure white, or white at the edge and pinkish yellowish, tan, or buff at the center.

• Cap usually bald (without warts, but sometimes with a thin white patch of universal veil tissue).

• Edge of cap usually (not always!) without radial lines or furrows.

• Gills and stalk white in all stages.

• Partial veil present, at first covering the gills, then disintegrating or forming a fragile skirtlike ring high on the stalk.

•  Universal veil white, enveloping the young mushroom, then forming a sack or cup (volva) at base of stalk.

• Always growing near trees, especially oak.

 Other Features: Medium-sized; gills not running down the stalk; stalk slender or stout, usually thickened at base or with a bulb; spores white.

 Where: On ground in woods and at their edges; common under oak in California during the winter and spring, possibly in Oregon and the Southwest. In southern California and the Sierra Nevada foothills it is more common than the death cap.

 Edibility: Deadly poisonous!

 Note: This tantalizing mushroom can be slender or robust; it might be mistaken for the meadow mushroom, horse mushroom, ma'am on motorcycle, spring coccora, or other delectables, yet it has not been implicated in as many poisonings as the death cap. Another deadly, pure white destroying angel, A. verna, has been found in the Pacific Northwest.