Although cases are cited where this mushroom has been eaten without injury, its fatally poisonous effects have been too well and too often tested to allow of any doubt as to the danger of eating it, even in small quantities.
Amanita Frostiana, Frost's Amanita, is a much smaller species than A. muscaria. It bears a very close resemblance to the Fly Amanita, and might easily be taken for a small form of the same. The cap is yellowish and warted, and specimens occur in which the stem and gills are slightly tinged with yellow. It is poisonous.
Plate XV.
Fig. 8.—Ag. (Amanita) phalloides Fries (Amanita phalloides) A. vernalis Bolt., A. verrucosus Curtis. "Poisonous Amanita," "Death Cup."
Poisonous.
Cap bell-shaped or ovate at first, then expanded, smooth, obtuse, viscid, margin even, creamy-white, brown, or greenish, without warts; flesh white; stem white, hollow or stuffed, bulbous at the base, annulate; gills rounded and ventricose, coarse, and persistently white, free from the stem; volva conspicuous, large, loose, adhering to the base, but free from the stem at the top, with the margin irregularly notched. In the white forms there is frequently a greenish or yellow tinge at the disk or centre of the cap. The white form is most common, but the brownish is often found in this country. I have not yet found the green-capped variety sometimes figured in European works. In the brown variety the stem and ring are often tinged with brown, as also the volva. The cap is usually from 2 to 3 inches broad, and the stem from 3 to 5 inches long. The whole plant is symmetrical in shape and clean looking, though somewhat clammy to the touch when moist. It is very common in mixed woods, in some localities, and is universally considered as fatally poisonous.
The white form of A. phalloides, although in reality bearing very little resemblance to the common field mushroom, has been mistaken for it as also for the Smooth white lepiota, and in some instances has been eaten with fatal results by those who gathered it.
The distinction between this most poisonous Amanita and the common field mushroom is well marked. In the common mushroom the gills are pink, becoming dark brown, the spores purplish brown, and the whole mushroom is stout and short stemmed, the stem being shorter than the diameter of the cap, and having no volva, or wrapper at its base. In the species A. phalloides the gills are persistently white and the bulb is distinct and broad at the base, the white cup-shaped wrapper sheathing the base of the stem like the calyx of a flower. The Smooth white lepiota shows neither volva nor trace of one, and has other distinct characteristics which distinguish it from A. phalloides. See [page 14, No. 4] of this series.
The specimen figured in [Plate XV] grew in Maryland, where it is quite common.
Plate XV.