can anyone i.d. this mushroom? It was found by a friend of mine in the poconos, PA, in early sep. I think it's an Amanita, but not a A.Muscaria or A.Pholodies. He said he thought it was a magic mushroom and was going to eat it, but I told him "no it's not, give it here!!!" And I confiscated it from him, for his own good.

You have a lovely Amanita Pantherina there. I would eat it. I would not give it to anybody else though. Where was that picked?

It doesn't look like a panther to me, there's no rolled volval collar. And the color doesn't seem right. There also aren't any concentric rings (which if present would indicate that it's an Amanita muscaria).

It's possible you rubbed off the volval remnants from the base when picking it (in which case it might be A. muscaria var. guessowii), but it's also possible there weren't any there in the first place.

My best guess is that it's an Amanita frostiana, considering the base, the fact that the annulus appears to have fallen off (and its remnants are very high up on the stipe), the tapering stipe, and the location. This is probably the most convincing look-alike species for A. muscaria that occurs on the East Coast.

I'd recommend you not eat it. The edibility of A. frostiana is unknown. In the future, pay close attention to the base of the stipe when picking fly agarics to make a positive identification.

Check out my Guide to Hunting Fly Agarics in North America for more details.

Edit: Looking at the pics again, I'm almost certain it's a frostiana. Don't eat it.

DO NOT EAT THAT MUSHROOM!!!

IF YOU'VE ALREADY EATEN IT, YOUR AN IDOIT, GO TO THE FUCKING HOSPITAL!!!

I'm definately biased towards Entropymancer's opinion on this (thanks Entropymancer), after viewing some online picts. Not edible? I was immpressed by it, non-the-less. When it was shown to me, I knew enough by studying James Arthur what it wasn't, but what it resembled. That's why I took it away from my buddy. If it was an actual A.Muscaria, I certainly would have confiscated it anyway (My buddy isn't quite as geeky when it comes to entheobotony as me, but he certainly was fearless when I passed him the DMT pipe later that nite). I've still got it in dried up form for a souvineir. Now I really want to go find some more Amanita's. To bad I don't live in their habitats, people here mostly talk about hunting for morrels...

My guess, amanita muscaria var. alba

Albas are much paler, they may have light creamy yellow caps, but never the pale orange that you can see in the pics above. If it's a muscaria, it's var. guessowii. But I'm pretty darn sure it's not a muscaria, due to the tapering stipe, high annulus (which has been shed), small bulb, and lack of concentric rings. That's a lot of factors pointing to it not being a muscaria.

I'm 95+% certain that's Amanita frostiana. A. frostiana is in the same chemotoxic group as the muscarias (it contains ibotenic acid/muscimol), but it's unknown whether it might contain other toxic compounds which could make it a very bad idea to eat.

Yup, you're right. A friend of mine, fairly experienced mycologist and forager agreed with the Amanita frostiana identification.

This is exactly why i disagree with 69ron on how safe it is to pick pantherine's an muscaria variations. In their previous posts entropymancer and infundibulum have both shown to have quite some knowledge on these type of things and they didn't agree on what it was, right away.

"it's possible you rubbed off the volval remnants from the base when picking it"

So whenever you have to do this type of 'spinning' in order to recognize something as edible, you're playing a dangerous game. In this case with your liver at stake, because that's the organ that could be destroyed within 40 hours after eating a poisonous amanita.
It's a beautyfull mushroom though.

I have to disagree with that statement just a little. No decent muscaria look-alike contains amatoxins (though you can always perform a Meixner test to confirm this if you get paranoid). Your liver is very unlikely to be at stake in the case of a mis-identification.

What may be at stake is your kidneys. Some paler Amanita species can contain nephrotoxins, which begin to knock out your kidneys in 6-8 hours.

ALWAYS be sure of your identification. Then post detailed pics and seek the second opinion of experts (like the folks at the Shroomery's Mushroom Hunting forum).

I didn't include the details of positively identifying A pantehrina in that guide I linked above, simply because I'm still on the fence about how safe it is to consume even when it is properly identified. I believe that the panthers that grow in the San Francisco Bay area are probably safe, but I'm less sure about the eastern North American and the Eurasian ones.

OK, chance of finding a donorkidney is probably twice as big as of finding a donorliver, since most of us still have two of them when we get killed in traffic or tragic cases of domestic violence.

Isn't A.muscaria always red? or red/orange. At least I've never seen A.muscaria so pale. I would NEVER eat this mushroom.

Nope. Check out my Guide to Hunting Fly Agarics.

In the united states, you'll almost never find Amanita muscaria that are deep crimson red (except when they're first emerging from their universal veil if you're on the west coast). On the east coast, the two primary types of Amanita muscaria are var. guessowii (which looks a lot like the picture Spock posted) and var. persicina (which can be that pale, but still tends to have a peachy-colored area in the center of the cap. But even on the west coast, the bright orange/red ones can fade to be as light as the picture in the original post.

Also, Amanita muscaria can be brown (var. regalis) or even white (var. alba).

The color of the cap is a polymorphic trait.

That all depends on your skill. I think its quite easy. A panther looks like a panther to me. I geuss I just have good eyes.

Here is a panther:



Your mushroom does not look like a panther to me. The only similarities are the dots on top. That's it. The rest is completely different.

Look at the stem. It is totally different. It looks nothing like a panther. Look here at the mushroom in question. Examine the stem. You'll see what I'm talking about. It is nothing like a panther. The color is wrong, the texture is wrong, it's a different kind of stem with different identifying features.



The panther is identified by the dots, the color of the cap, the type of stem (all parts) and the color of the spore area under the cap and the color of the spore print. You get all those features right and it can only be a panther. It's quite easy to identify when you know all the features to look for.

SWIM can spot them a mile away. Once you know the features and you pick them a few times, you won't get fooled by those look alikes. None of them have all the features of a panther. NONE.

The stem is the main key to proper amanita identification. The colors of a panther's head can fade and become just as yellow as the other amanita on the picture. But once you start making excuses like;maybe it HAD a volval collar,etc....
But anyway, i ate patherine's, and they weren't different from muscaria's. A few people in this thread suggested that the yellow one from the picture could be eaten, that's my point.
Where i live, people die each year, because they make mistake's with amanita's. Most of the time this has to do with the 'similarity' between a kind of champignon and an amanita of wich i don't know the english name, literally translated from dutch it would be: green bowl-amanita, so maybe you have an idea wich mushroom i'm talking about and then you know that it resembles the giant champignon mushroom as much as the yellow frostiana resembles a pantherine.

thanks everyone for getting SO excited about careful I.D. of Amanita mushrooms. Of course I was simply curious about it, as I was impressed by it. It took me about 1 mins of contemplation, after I was presented with this awesome mushroom, to realize that it was not a muscaria. But clearly being an Amanita, I wondered what it was, specifically. Also, I realize that the Amanita's as a family have the most sinister toxins of poisonus muchrooms.

I also wonder why mushrooms like this, and the A.muscaria have the white dots on them, and what they're comprised of. Do the dots contain the toxin, or certain components of the overall toxcicity/magic? What is their biologic function?

They are remains of the universal veil. Most notably amanitas, when they ate still young they ar closed in an egg-like structure, called universal veil. Part of this egg-like structure is also seen on the bottom of the stem of the mushroom, called volva.

The white spots can be removed by hand or rain sometimes.

In other mushrooms white spots can even be random mycelium sprouting out of the cap.

I thought it was a cut and dried case. Pantherina no mistake, no doubt, no question. I was astonished this morning when I had another look on this thread and found Entropymancer casting very grave doubts about my identification. He wrote as if he knew what he was talking about, he seamed pretty sure of his facts. He seamed cohearant and lucid, nothing about his manner suggested he was under the influence of some kind of mind altering substance.

So I had another good look at the Spocksbrain's photos. I then googled images of Panthers and Frostianas. After some further reading and research, allied with what I allready know about shrooms, I am slightly perturbed to say I agree with Entropymancer's identification.


Peturbed, because every time I see a mushroom exactly resembleing Spocksbrain's, I pick it and eat it. I live in Northern UK, I dont find these shrooms very common. They are something of a notable find for me, I know exactly that I have eaten five of them. I have two sat in my freazer right now. I live in a place where Frostianas are not known to grow but my Panthers are never as dark as the ones on the google images.

If Spocksbrain were to offer me his shroom, I would, even after this ID curiousness still have no quarms about eating it.

As someone with some formal mycological training do not eat ANY MUSHROOM you are not 100% sure of its ID. Especially aminita's as many of them are some of the most deadly mushrooms on earth (although muscaria look alikes are not usually those ones). As far as A. muscaria goes its often red and sometimes its yellow (more often yellow in the U.S.), but there is another yellow amanita that is dangerous (I forget the name). If its deep red there is no other look alike if its yellow or brown there are dangerous look alikes and SWIM wouldn't risk it unless it was properly ID'd by a professional. But then again SWIM values his life and liver . SWIM almost made the mistake of eating "jack o lantern" mushrooms thinking it was a kind of chanterelle and that would have made for a fun (but not fatal) trip to the hospital haha.

Anyway personally SWIM would not eat that mushroom.