Hard to tell if that's a panther or a blusher at this stage! Do you have any pro tips? Besides the eventual red discoloration of the latter, of course…Panthers comin
Nice touch with the ladybird (ladybug?) larva in the pic, btw!
Hard to tell if that's a panther or a blusher at this stage! Do you have any pro tips? Besides the eventual red discoloration of the latter, of course…Panthers comin
I'd personally be wary of picking anything besides muscaria and rubescens, tbh. The consequences of ID error would be too terrible! I'm not confident that there aren't any amatoxin-producing yellow-brown species with velar remnant spots on their caps - and what do people think of the supposed higher potency/toxicity of A. pantherina?Now I think you might be correct and it is maybe Amanita amerirubescens(blusher)…not sure I’m not all that up on what looks like panthers here other than gemmata which I think is in the panther grouping? Gemmata is the only yellow amanita I ever picked and used but I have almost no experience with it vs muscaria.
very much soAmanita…?

That one's not on my personal (European) radar, just for the record, so I'll defer to those with greater expertise on this.I think pantherinoides…
From what I see it seems to be Amanita pantherina.I think pantherinoides…
I see. If I saw that mushroom in the forest here, I would say it's pantherina. Researching the bulb below might show some subtle differences, not sure.We don’t have them here. Our “panthers” are Pantherinoides afaik…but I’ve not paid much attention to amanita id besides the red ones so I’m def not an expert.

While the full size amanitas are beautiful and the small ones are cute looking, and the effects of low doses are soporific and calming, there definitely seems to be a shadowy/witchy quality to amanitas, at the same time.
I've experienced some freaky/nightmarish dreams that seemed linked to amanitas, which didn't phase me too much, as they didn't feel personal or have an emotional charge. In one dream, I met a fox that would flash between appearing friendly and demonic while moving in diagonal leaps, until it approached me and gave me some kind of sacred object. In another dream, I was driving down a road that was full of bloody animal carcasses, which is out of the ordinary for me, as I don't typically have gory dreams like that. I'm pretty sure that I had these dreams while taking a potent amanita extract at night, as opposed to drinking amanita tea. However, at that point, I think I was also adding amanitas to my tea in the daytime.
Recently, I have been periodically drinking a tea of 100-200mg dried amanitas at night, which has been very mild. Last night, I upped the dose to ~500mg, which felt quite a bit heavier, and seemed to bring on at least one nightmare, which felt different from the dreams that I previously described. Unlike the dream with the benevolent/demonic fox, or the gory dream with the animal carcasses, this particular dream was emotionally charged, conflict laden, and saturated with shadowy themes related to my family of origin. Overall, I prefer lighter physical and mental effects when it comes to amanitas, so I'll probably scale the dose back down, going forward.