There are essentially no general hard and fast rules like that when it comes to mushroom hunting, there is no substitute for knowing how to positively identify specific species, where specific species should be growing, and knowing what distinguishes them from similar poisonous species.

I don't see why this could possibly get downvoted, it's absolutely true. If you do have a "hard and fast" rule in mind, it may work in your region but not in other places.

Besides the trivial rule of "pick no mushrooms", of course.

> If you do have a "hard and fast" rule in mind, it may work in your region but not in other places.

There are lots of hard and fast rules in different regions though that do work if you can ID the mushroom to genus. E.g. in New England, no green mushrooms in the Russula genus are poisonous.

A surprising number of people seem to think that. No correlation AFAICT. Some of the best mushrooms are colorful (eg. chanterelles).

Chanterelles are great because there are only 2 other mushrooms that are even close in resemblance and neither of them is particularly poisonous. One just tastes bad and the other will cause a stomach ache. They're also very easy to tell apart from the real deal even for a novice like me.

Harvested and ate a bunch a few weekends ago with a buddy. Delicious.

Word - I just foraged a bunch of them recently! Once you find them, more are usually nearby! Also, once you've had them on hand enough, it becomes easy to identify them with a very high degree of certainty.

Absolutely - like the perfect mushroom being super unique, and super tasty.

You mean Omphalotus olearius and Hygrophoropsis aurantica? First one could be very nasty, maybe not deadly but very painful. Easily possible to confuse with Cantharellus cibarius, See https://www.wemjournal.org/article/S1080-6032(15)00475-5/pdf

We were taught to avoid white mushrooms, as in our area the poisionous ones you might mistake for edible ones are white.