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Brown panther cap mushroom with white veil flecks on the cap and a rimmed stem bulb.

© James St. John · CC BY 2.0 · Commons

Panther cap

Toxic🐾

Pantherpilz · (Amanita pantherina)

Amanita family (Amanitaceae)

Description

An olive-brown to grey-brown cap dotted with white, wart-like patches and a distinct ring on the stem identify the panther cap, which fruits from June to November mostly in deciduous and mixed woodland and belongs to the amanita family. It contains ibotenic acid, muscimol, muscazone and small amounts of muscarine – compounds of interest in ethnomycology and neuroscience research, but they make this mushroom unsuitable for consumption under any circumstances. It is considered more toxic than the better-known fly agaric and is frequently confused with the edible blusher, a mix-up that regularly causes severe poisoning. Symptoms include nausea, dilated pupils, confusion and seizures, and can progress to respiratory failure. This is NOT an edible mushroom; if ingestion is suspected, contact emergency poison control immediately.

Historical documentation only — do NOT use

These internal applications are historically documented. This plant is highly toxic — self-treatment can cause severe poisoning or death. For documentation only, explicitly NOT a recommendation.

  • RawWhole plantInternalFolk medicine

    Historical-ethnomycological context: the panther cap is grouped with the fly agaric among the ibotenic-acid/muscimol-bearing Amanita species studied in research on the intoxicating mushrooms of northern Eurasia (e.g. Siberian shamanism, where the fly agaric in particular played a role). This is purely historical-documentary context and NOT a usage guide; the mushroom is poisonous.

    Sources: [1] [2]

  • RawWhole plantInternalTraditional use

    Pharmacological context: the constituents ibotenic acid (a glutamate/NMDA receptor agonist) and muscimol (a potent GABA-A receptor agonist) have long been studied in basic neuropharmacology; ibotenic acid is used in the laboratory to produce targeted lesions of nervous tissue. This describes the mechanisms and research use of the isolated compounds, not consumption of the mushroom.

    Sources: [4] [5]

More from this family · Amanita family

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