Amanita daucipes - Amanitaceae.org - Taxonomy and Morphology of Amanita and Limacella
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name Amanita daucipes
name status nomen acceptum
author (Mont.) Lloyd
english name "Carrot-Footed Lepidella"
images

  • 1. Amanita daucipes, Lake Sherwood Recreation Area, Monongahela Nat. For., Greenbrier Co., West Virginia, U.S.A.  (RET 214-2)



  • 2. Amanita daucipes, Assunpink Wildlife Management Area, Upper Freehold Twp., Monmouth Co., New Jersey, U.S.A.  (Tulloss 8-16-80-F)


  • 3. Amanita daucipes, young button with volva not yet colored, Oakmoss Mycol. Preserve, Lebanon, Hunterdon Co., New Jersey, U.S.A.  (not collected)

  • Amanita daucipes - margin of maturing cap - NJAmanita daucipes - margin of maturing cap - NJ

    4. Amanita daucipes, margin of maturing cap, Oakmoss Mycol. Preserve, Lebanon, Hunterdon Co., New Jersey, U.S.A.  (RET 401-7)

    • intro double click in markup mode to edit.
    cap The cap of Amanita daucipes is 89 - 200 mm wide, white or very pale sordid beige (and then darker in the center).  The cap is subhemispheric at first, then convex. It is dull when dry and sometimes cracks so that each wart is in the center of a region bounded by cracks.  The flesh is white, not staining/bruising when cut, but slowly becoming pink and then more or less dark brick red in old wounds; it is more or less 7 mm thick over the stipe, and thins evenly to the cap margin.  The margin is not striate; it is appendiculate.  The volva on the cap takes a variety of forms—thick cake-like warts and/or narrow subconic or small pyramidal warts sometimes connected at tips suggesting decoration on some Lycoperdon spp.; toward the cap margin, the warts become smaller.  At first the warts are white to pale pinkish.  They then become pinkish beige to pinkish to reddish pink; with age, they become pallid on the sides and grayish on top; and they are easily removable.
    gills The gills of this species are free (or occasionally very narrowly adnate), without a decurrent line on the stipe; they are close to subcrowded, cream in mass, pale yellow or pale yellowish cream in side view.  They are about as broad as the thicknesss of the pileus above the stipe (e.g., 12 mm broad); and their margins are flocculose (lens).  The short gills are truncate to attenuate, plentiful, unevenly distributed, and of many lengths.
    stem The stem of A. daucipes (excluding the bulb) is 55 - 193 × 9 - 25 mm, white, decorated with white to pale pinkish to pink flocculence (easily removed on one's fingers when a fresh specimen is handled), with flocculence often densest in upper half (approximately).  The stem's bulb is 60 - 150 × 31 - 60 mm, radicating, irregularly turnip-shaped or irregularly top-shaped or carrot-shaped, infrequently potatoe-like; it is also often marked with vertical clefts and has a surface that often stains/bruises strongly vinaceous or reddish vinaceous at maturity.  The flesh of the stem is solid, mostly white or cream-white, not staining or bruising rapidly, but eventually staining/bruising, with old wounds colored as in the case of the cap.  The ring of A. daucipes is superior to subapical to apical, white, submembranous-felted, tearing, striate above, flocculose-fibrillose below, and with its underside having some or many flocculose pinkish areas; it commonly falls from the stipe by maturity of the mushroom.  The volva is usually absent on the stem's bulb.  On the other hand, there are often parts of the volva's internal limb remaining as a loose, rather thick, felted ring around the base of the stipe (lying on the top of the bulb) or as a rather robust felted patch or patches in roughly the same position; these remnants are pinkish brown to white with pinkish regions.
    odor/taste The odor is strong and sweetish or nondescript in young material and meat-like to “old ham” or decaying protein in older material.  To my knowledge, the taste has not been recorded.
    spores The spores measure (7.7-) 8.0 - 11.5 (-13.8) × (4.5-) 5.0 - 6.8 (-9.9) µm and are ellipsoid to elongate (rarely broadly ellipsoid, rarely cylindric) and amyloid.  Clamps are present at bases of basidia.
    discussion The species occurs with oak (Quercus) or in mixed Pine-Oak forest.  Hickory and Birch are also sometimes found nearby.

    The range of the species extends from the eastern part of the U.S.A. to the neo-volcanic zone of central Mexico.

    WARNING: I have been told on a number of occasions that the stipe's bulb is edible.  Considering the poor knowledge of toxins in section Lepidella and the established fact that kidney and/or liver failure is associated with ingestion of some species in section Lepidella, I cannot recommend that this species be eaten.—R. E. Tulloss
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