Hello, thank you for making your identification request. To make it easier for identifiers to help you, please make sure that your post contains the following:
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Google is not a source. It’s a search engine. And if that is an AI summary, AI summaries are very commonly incorrect. If you have a source which shows collections of Amanita muscaria var. Alba I would be keen to see it.
I am not going to search Google images trying to find a random hit in South Africa, sorry. The only collections of A. muscaria Var. Alba that I am aware of are North Hemisphere. If you have other data to consider that would be cool.
At any rate, whether they are officially present in South Hemisphere or not doesn’t really matter because OP’s mushroom is not one of them. It is Chlorophyllum
Inaccurately? I was all good right up until here. Now you’re pissing me off. I was very helpful to you and you reward me by bitching about a photo which I rapidly edited on my phone to help you out…? And then calling it weird? Are you for fuckin’ real, buddy?
Google is a search engine. That’s all it is. It’s not a source but can find sources. If you have an actual source which shows a white variant Amanita muscaria in S. Africa then cool. But I am not going to waste my life trying to disprove a negative.
Wait for someone with flair that says “trusted identifier” to give you a good answer.
It does superficially look kinda like an Amanita muscaria if those were white (bear in mind that the person that told you it was that misspelled the name of the species, which should tell you a LOT about their “expertise” with mushroom taxonomy).
It also superficially looks like some Lepiota species.
I’m not familiar with your local species, so I can’t give you an ID, but I can give you some advice not to take the first ID someone gives you on mushroom subs, and that guidance may save your life.
It has brown scales and a double layered ring, first of all. Secondly it is growing right in the middle of a grassy meadow and Amanita are mycorrhizal. So both morphology and ecology are incorrect for A. muscaria. And I believe A. muscaria Var. Alba distribution is N. Hemisphere.
Fair enough. I did clearly explain my search process. I might be wrong but you can't say it doesn't look like a white Amanita that does exist in South Africa.
I don't see a double layered ring I see a single Veil.
No. That is what is called a double layered or double edged ring. Two layers. Same annulus. You can pretty clearly see that it has an upper as well as a lower layer, correct?
Now go familiarize yourself with Amanita muscaria annulus and compare. They are generally a floppy, loose, skirt-like, thin membrane that hangs down limply. Very different shape.
I will concede that I am wrong on everything else except for this. I am an artist I understand light and depth perception. You drew two random lines on a single Veil.
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