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. It is easily found in the large planted pine and fir stands on the coast - the pine and fir stand in the northeast section of San Pedro Point has an extensive colony with vast color variations that start coming out shortly after Thanksgiving and the first rains. The small trails that interlace along the hillside provide an afternoon of delightful mushroom viewing, especially if the sun is out and highlighting the patches of A. muscaria. Some of the red Russulas may seem similar in coloration, but lack the stalk ring, bulbed base, vulva and distinctive fragments on the cap. Russulas also snap apart like chalk.