A large mushroom, up to 7 and a half inches wide, and up to a foot tall. Cap pale to bright yellow to yellow orange, more orange in the center, adorned with many white patches, slimy and sticky when fresh. Shape is rounded when young, becoming flat to saucer-shaped when mature. Gills many, white. Stem white, with a skirt (ring) under the cap, and concentric shaggy zones above the swollen base. Fruits in summer to fall.

A beautiful native fungus of the Northeast and northern Midwest, south to the Appalachians. In forests under both hardwoods and conifers with which it forms mycorrhizal associations where the trees provide sugar to the mushrooms and the mushrooms pull in minerals for the trees. Common in Wildwood when conditions are good.

A distinctve species, farily easy to identify. Red fly agaric (A. muscaria var. flavivolvata), is very similar but has a red top: it has not yet been reported from Wildwood.

This species is famous for its hallucinogenic properties; however, it is also poisonous, although few deaths have been reported.