White-spored Series 
Fly Amanita (Poisonous) 
Amanita muscaria 
Cap or Pileus—Orange red to pale yellow or almost white. The 
young plants are brighter, and fade from the margin inward 
as the plant matures. Floccose scales, the wrapper remains, 
are scattered on the cap. The margin is often striate. 3-6 
inches broad. 
Stem or Stipe—White or slightly tinged with yellow. Pithy or 
hollow. Base not broad and abrupt, but ovate, covered 
with the scaly margins of the wrapper. 4-6 inches long. 
Veil and Ring or Annulus—The veil covers the gills of the young 
plant, and later is seen as a collar-like ring on the stem. 
Gills or Lamelle—White or slightly tinged with yellow. Various 
in length ; short ones terminating in length with almost 
vertical abruptness. 
Spores—W hite, broadly elliptical. 
flesh—W hite, tinged with yellow under the epidermis. 
Habitat—Along roadsides, on borders of fields, in groves of conif- 
erous trees. It prefers poor soil, gravelly or scanty. It 
grows singly, not in groups. 
Time—June until freezing weather. 
Young Plant—This is at first egg-like, then dumb-bell shaped. 
As the parts within expand, the wrapper breaks up into 
scales, so that the convex, unexpanded cap is densely covered 
with more or less concentric fragments of the wrapper, and 
the bulbous stem is covered with rings of fringy scales. As 
the stem expands, these scales are left on the bulbous base, 
while the fragments on the cap are more widely separated 
by the growth of the cap. 
The fly amanita is a very conspicuous and handsome species. 
There are conflicting statements concerning the properties of 
this fungus; some claim that it is edible, and yet it is known ° 
to have caused much sickness and many deaths. It caused 
the death of the Czar Alexis of Russia, and of the Count de 
Vecchi in Washington. It is said that it is cooked and eaten 
by the Russians, and still it is on record that several French 
soldiers ate of it in Russia and became very ill. 
The Siberians steep dried specimens of the fly amanita+in 
whortleberry juice, and thus make a drink which produces an 
intoxication similar to that produced by the ‘‘haschisch” and 
“‘majoon” of the East. 
Miis-ca’-ri-& 
3 49 
