Amanita cinerascens - Amanitaceae.org - Taxonomy and Morphology of Amanita and Limacella
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name Amanita cinerascens
name status nomen acceptum
author A. E. Wood
english name "Wood's Graying Lepidella"
intro

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

cap

The cap of Amanita cinerascens is up to 80 mm wide, convex then plane, smooth, dry, sometimes slightly viscid, pallid cream to cream-buff or buff-gray, with a nonstriate margin [possibly appendiculate?].  Volval remains are present as rather fine but prominent, pyramidal warts, less distinct on the outer parts of the cap, usually a little paler than the cap color.

gills

The gills are free, thin, crowded, white to pale cream, occasionally with some pink tint, with a mostly white edge.  The short gills are present in at least two series.

stem

The stem is up to 100 × 10 mm, white above and more or less cream below, smooth above, slightly finely fibrillose below.  The ring is large, submembranous, white to cream to somewhat gray, skirt-like, striate above, occasionally sufficiently fragile to break up and fall away.  The bulb is top-shaped to turnip-shaped, white, with sparse, usually grayish, irregular zones and scales of volval material on the upper part.

spores

The spores measure (7.8-) 9.6 - 12.3 × (5.2-) 6.0 - 8.1 (-9.0) µm and are ellipsoid to elongate and amyloid.  Clamps are plentiful at bases of basidia.

discussion

Wood describes the mushroom as occurring in sclerophyll forests 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).

This species is placed in section Validae by Wood, however, it belongs in section Lepidella by the same argument given in the case of Amanita elongatispora A. E. Wood.

According to Wood's description and the key of Bas (1969) the most probable placement for Amanita cinerascens is in stirps Daucipes.—R. E. Tulloss and L. Possiel

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