Finally got to this one. It’s ravenelii…as if anyone doubted it.

R.

I put the cap on paper for a couple days & have a nice thick spore print.
Sending that & dried material after the cap is done.

What’s the best thing to do with the spores — fold up the paper and send it,
or scrape them into a bottle?

like the rest of nature, those amanitas always bat last. Valiant attempt, tho!

you could try staking the cap (a pencil stuck in a bar of soap might work) in a natural position with moisture provided. Otherwise, it might just have to go to the land of semi-identified lepidellas…

I had it propped up in a bowl with a towel around it, and it expanded
a bit by this morning, but overbalanced & the cap broke off! I cut the
partial veil off of the gills (creamy white) and put the cap on a sheet
of white paper to see if I can get ANY spores this early. Is that the
best I can do for now? I’ll take a few more pictures of what I have.

The stalk has been dried, partial veil was floccose and whiteer, and had very faint striations from the gills. Some of that fell onto the stalk, looked
kind of like powdery snow.

Patrick, I have gotten lepidellas to mature at home by placing them upright in a plastic cup, lined with damp sphagnum moss, and loosely covered by a second cup, with a microscope slide taped to the cup margin to catch the sporedrop. You will need a bucket for your giant, tho! And a cool place in which to leave it, no small feat in August in Missouri. Good luck, and thanks for sharing…