Amanita guzmanii - Amanitaceae.org - Taxonomy and Morphology of Amanita and Limacella
[print] [map]
name Amanita guzmanii
name status nomen acceptum
author Cifuentes, Villegas & Santiago
english name "Guzmán's Amanita"
intro

The following description is based on the original description by Santiago, Cifuentes, and Villegas (1984).

cap

The cap of A. guzmanii is 70 - 130 mm wide, convex then planar, whitish, with a striate margin. The cap is covered with easily removed powdery volva remains, that is orange-brown and discolors to a pale sordid orange-brown. There are also large, whitish, truncate, pyramidal to subcubic warts that are 3 - 5 mm high and leave a mark on the cap when removed. The flesh is 6 - 8 mm thick over the stem and white.

gills

The gills are free to lightly touching the stem, crowded, white to pale cream, rather broad, with an edge decorated with powder that is concolorous with the cap. The short gills are truncate and numerous.

stem The stem is 95 - 210 × 15 - 25 mm, cylindric or narrowing upwards, with a whitish ground which is densely covered with powdery scales, concolorous with the cap volva and discoloring like the cap powder.  The bulb is subglobose. The ring is membranous but fragile, skirt-like, whitish on the upper surface, concolorous with the volva on the lower surface.
odor/taste The taste is slightly astringent.
spores

Herrera-Fonseca and Guzmán-Dávalos (2002) reexamined the type of A. guzmanii and found the spores dominantly broadly ellipsoid, occasionally subglobose and occasionally ellipsoid and apparently found them to be smaller than they were described originally. Unfortunately they did not publish the spore measurements that they made. The spore measurements from the original description are (8.4-) 9.7 - 14.2 × 6.7 - 8.2 (-9) µm.  They were said to be ellipsoid to elongate and inamyloid. 

discussion

This species is originally described from the states of Guerrero and Michoacan, in Mexico where it occurs solitarily or in groups in montane cloud forest (bosque mesófilo de montaña) of oak (Quercus) or of oak and pine (Quercus-Pinus).

The original photograph of Amanita guzmanii, when color corrected using Photoshop, appears to have the same coloring as A. roseitincta (Murrill) Murrill.  The difference in color stated in the original description of the present species may be in error.  We understand that Dra. Laura Guzmán-Dávalos and student(s) are pursuing the issue of possible synonymy of A. guzmanii and A. roseitincta—R. E. Tulloss and L. Possiel

brief editors RET

[top]