Amanita alboverrucosa - Amanitaceae.org - Taxonomy and Morphology of Amanita and Limacella
[print] [map]
name Amanita alboverrucosa
name status nomen acceptum
author A. E. Wood
english name "Walkabout Lepidella"
intro

The following is largely based on the original description (Wood 1997).

cap

The cap of Amanita alboverrucosa is up to 130 mm wide, off-white to grayish buff or pallid cream-gray, convex then plano-convex or plane, smooth, dry, with a nonstriate and appendiculate margin.  Large, prominent pyramidal warts are present on the cap, smaller towards the margin, white to cream, discoloring a little with age.

gills

The gills are free, crowded, thin, white to pale cream, with a concolorous edge.  The short gills are present in at least one series.

stem

The stem is up to 150 × 20 mm, white to pale cream, smooth to finely fibrous to decorated with some scales of the volva.  The ring is membranous, skirt-like, persistent (occasionally fragile), white to cream, and not striate above or only slightly so.  The bulbous base of the stipe is rounded or slightly top-shaped, and white to off-white.  A few conical warts or a few concentric bands of fibers appear on the top of the bulb, occasionally these volval fragments become slightly yellow.

spores

The spores measure (8.7-) 9.6 - 11.7 × (6.4-) 7.1 - 9.3 µm and are broadly ellipsoid and amyloid.  Clamps are easily distinguished but irregularly distributed at bases of basidia.

discussion

Wood describes the mushroom as occurring in sclerophyll forests, "tall open forests," and under Allocasuarina from the state of New South Wales, Australia.  A sclerophyll forest in the Australian bush is a forest of hard-leaved plants including Eucalyptus in the overstory (wikipedia).

Wood places the present species in Bas' stirps Ravenelii but fails to provide sufficient information about the volva to justify his choice. If the elements of the volva have a distinctly vertical orientation in the warts and have a largely hyphal base including rather frequent yellowish and refractive hyphae then stirps Ravenelii could be appropriate.  If such a base layer of the warts is not present there are a number of other possibilities depending on the orientation of the elements within the warts  Therefore we refrain from assigning this species to a specific stirps in Bas' system.
—R. E. Tulloss and L. Possiel

brief editors RET

[top]