Amanita foetidissima - Amanitaceae.org - Taxonomy and Morphology of Amanita and Limacella
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name Amanita foetidissima
name status nomen acceptum
author D. A. Reid & Eicker
english name "Stinker Lepidella"
images

  • 1. Amanita foetidissima, Centurion, Praetoria, Gauteng, South Africa.   (RET 728-3)


  • 2. Amanita foetidissima, Centurion, Praetoria, Gauteng, South Africa.   (RET 728-3)

    • intro This description is based on the original description of Amanita foetidissima.
    cap According to the original description of A. foetidissima (Reid and Eicker, 1991), the cap is 70 - 140 mm wide (and said to grow much larger), initially conico-convex, then convex or convex-campanulate and finally applanate, pale creamy buff to buff, and occasionally more brightly colored with yellowish ochre tints.  The surface disrupts from an early age into thick, soft, concolorous or darker, floccose warts, passing into cob-webby fibrils towards the margin.
    gills The gills are 10 - 20 mm broad and pale cream to dirty cream.
    stem The stem is 70 - 160 × 10 - 20 mm, solid, sqarrose, with buffy brown squamules on a whitish background.
    spores The spores measure 7.0 - 9.0 × 6.2 - 8.0 µm according to the published description and are amyloid and subglobose to globose to broadly ellipsoid.  Basidia bear clamps.

    Examination of spores from a single specimen from a collection cited in the published description yielded measurements of (8.3-) 9.0 - 10.6 (-11.5) × 7.0 - 8.5 (9.0) µm, and the spores are broadly ellipsoid to ellipsoid.
    discussion Amanita foetidissima was originally described from South Africa.  It has also been reported from Zambia.  Unfortunately, the name is invalid as published, due to uncertainty as to which of two herbaria named in the paper is the location of the holotype.

    This is a species of grasslands and public open spaces without trees.  It is strikingly similar both macro- and microscopically to A. nauseosa (Wakef.) D. A. Reid and is a probable vicariant ("sister") taxon of the latter.  One difference between the two is the occasional appearance of A. foetidissima with rather strikingly bright cap colors.  This suggests to me the possibility that it is subject to something akin to the "yellowing syndrome" that is observed in a number of taxa such as Amanita subsolitaria (Murrill) Murrill.—R. E. Tulloss
    brief editors RET

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