The caps are bald, and often with warts or patches of veil remnant. Some have a partial veil that usually leaves a ring on the stalk, and all have a universal veil that completely envelopes the young mushroom, resulting in a vulva at the base of the stem. They are often confused with puffballs, but a bisection from top to bottom will reveal the developing stalk, gills and cap in the Amanita. Most Amanita are mycorrhizal, and most commonly found amid or near trees with whose roots they form a symbiotic nutritional arrangement. Thick white flesh, firm but softening with age.
Favors pine, spruce, fir and aspen.
The effects vary greatly from person to person and mushroom to mushroom, the most common being at least an unpleasant experience all around. The principle toxin is ibotenic acid , but other toxins exist in varying quantities that exaggerate the nausea and vomiting experience. Ibotenic acid is converted to the more powerful form muscimol in the body, and affects the central nervous system, causing confusion, loss of muscular coordination, mild euphoria, profuse sweating, chills, visual distortions, and sometimes convulsions, hallucinations and delusions, and supposedly a feeling of greater strength. Quantities have the potential to be fatal. It also puts many people right to sleep, only to wake up hours later with the feeling they've been very sick.