Amanita vaginata?

[Indigo]

[rbenn]

I would guess A. vaginata without seeing spores.

[Indigo]

Cool. I need a microscope!

[Dave W]

These represent species of Amanita section vaginatae. In Europe, there are a few well-understood species... A. vaginata, A. fulva, A. croecea, and maybe a few others. In NA there exist a host of different species, some of which can only be IDed to species by DNA sequence. This is a very confusing group; in some cases examples that look the same have yielded different sequences, and mushrooms that look quite different have matching sequences. Sometimes spore morphology (need a microscope) gives useful info, particularly when the mushroom at hand represents the classification Amanita section Vaginatae stirps Rooseveltensis. Most (all?) of these species have ellipsoid spores. I believe that all --or at least most-- other species in section Vaginatae have globose (round) or subglobose (nearly round) spores. I believe the only European species to have been fond in NA is A. fulva. It is hypothesized that this species traveled across a land bridge that once connected Europe to eastern NA. But, in NA there are at least a couple other species that look like A. fulva! A. vaginata --despite being "documented" in many NA filed guides-- has not been versified as occurring in NA and the prevailing belief is that it does not.

To get a good read on species ID for almost any type of Amanita, one needs to extract the entire mushroom form the soil. The base of the stalk is where one sees the volva, and this trait is important in section Vaginatae. Some species have persistent membranous white volva, some have persistent membranous volva that stains brown, some have friable white volva, some have graying volva that may disintegrate in-situ. Pictured below are three examples of species housed in section Vaginatae. All three were found on the dame day (last Sunday) in identical habitat (oak woods) in the same location. The last teo photos show the same mushroom; note how the base of the stalk needed to be carefully extracted. 

As for the ones originally posted above... I think the first one may be a species housed in stirps Rooseveltensis http://www.amanitaceae.org/?stirps+Rooseveltensis . The second one looks like maybe a diffeernt species... based upon the chunky UV deposits seen on the cap, maybe something representing section Vaginatae series Cecliae http://www.amanitaceae.org/?series+Ceciliae .

Three "Vaginate". 3rd and 4th photos show the same mushroom, which may represent A. fulva.

 

[Indigo]

Fascinating read Dave! Thanks for sharing that 😀 I would never attempt to eat any mushroom in the Amanita family, even if Alan Rockefeller came over and cooked them up himself, haha! I'm just trying to get identified what all grows around here, because we have a plethora of mushrooms, and I don't know what 99% of them even are. I also like to take a stab at identifying them myself, just to see if I'm right too 😀 You also can't make a mistake with identifying such a deadly group of mushrooms, because that could be fatal!  This is why I would never eat any of them at all. And it goes to show you just how different the same mushroom can look/grow, depending on where found, weather, habitat, ect, like you showed.