Amanita echinocephala is a large, whitish or ivory-coloured mushroom with a characteristic spiny, or warty-looking cap.

It lives on chalky soils with beech trees, and appears earlier than most mushrooms of similar size in southern England.

It was first described as Agaricus echinocephalus in 1835 by the Italian mycologist Carlo Vittadini, before being placed in Amanita by Lucien Quélet and hence receiving its current binomial name.

It derives its specific epithet echinocephala from the Greek echino- "hedgehog" and kephale "head".

The young buttons are darker, and sometimes shaped like a two tier loaf, with a ring of raised scales around the base.

[4] Because the two species often share the same growing ground, A. echinocephala, and A. strobiliformis have both been erroneously identified as Amanita solitaria in the past.

It grows in light, dry calcareous soils with both broad leaved, (usually beech Fagus) and coniferous trees.