A medium-sized Amanita with a grayish-brown to purplish-brown cap, gray veil remnants, a gray ring and a rimmed bulb. It grows with conifers, especially spruce and hemlock, in northern and mountain forests. It is inedible and resembles several poisonous Amanitas, including the death cap.
Inedible; do not eat. Its toxicity is not well characterized in the sources consulted, but it can be confused with the deadly death cap (Amanita phalloides, amatoxins), which has a greenish to olive cap and a white membranous sack-like volva, and with the poisonous panther cap (A. pantherina, ibotenic acid/muscimol), which has white warts and a rolled collar on the bulb. A. brunnescens is a similar North American species with whitish veils and stems that bruise reddish brown.
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Habitat
Ectomycorrhizal with conifers, especially spruces and hemlocks, also fir and birch, often on poor soils. Alone, scattered or in groups. Summer and fall.
Distribution
Europe, where it is common in boreal and mountain forests, and northern North America from Maine to the Pacific Northwest; also recorded from Australia. Sources disagree on the identity of North American collections: MushroomExpert says they may be phylogenetically distinct from European material, while Wikipedia cites DNA evidence that they belong to the same species.
Characteristics
Cap: 3-12 cm, convex becoming broadly convex, often with a low umbo; sticky when young or wet; bald and radially streaked; grayish brown to purplish brown, often with scattered gray to purplish-gray warts or patches. Gills: free or attached, close, white, sometimes graying with age. Stem: 5-12 cm long, 1-1.5 cm thick, bald above the ring, with gray fibrils below often in chevron-like zones. Ring: grayish to gray-violet. Bulb: rimmed or collared, sometimes cleft; gray volval fragments may remain on the lower stem. Flesh: white; odor sometimes turnip-like with age. Spore print: white. Spores: 7-10 um, globose, smooth, amyloid.
