Amanita lavendula - Amanitaceae.org - Taxonomy and Morphology of Amanita and Limacella
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name Amanita lavendula
name status nomen acceptum
author (Coker) Tulloss, K. W. Hughes, Rodrig. Cayc., & Kudzma
english name "Coker's Lavender Staining Amanita"
images

  • 1. Amanita citrina f. lavendula, Coker's photo of lectotype (Coker 1432), Chapel Hill, Orange Co., North Carolina, USA.



  • 2. Amanita citrina f. lavendula, Coker's photo of original material (Coker 590), Chapel Hill, Orange Co., North Carolina, USA.



  • 3. Amanita sp-lavendula02, Wildacres Retreat, ca. Little Switzerland, McDowell Co., North Carolina, USA [RET 396-2].


  • 4. Amanita sp-lavendula02,' Wildacres Retreat, ca. Little Switzerland, McDowell Co., North Carolina, USA [RET 396-2] with hypermagenta test.



  • 5. Amanita sp-lavendula02, Hawn St. Pk., Ste. Genevieve Co., Missouri, USA [RET 495-8].


  • 6. Amanita sp-lavendula02, Hawn St. Pk., Ste. Genevieve Co., Missouri, USA [RET 495-8].

    • intro For the time being, please, see the technical tab for this page.
    discussion The present species was originally described from North Carolina, USA, where it occurs commonly in pine (Pinus) forest and mixed woods including pine and oak (Quercus).  Within its range, it and its two look-alikes (A. cornelihybrida and A. americitrina) are among the last species of Amanita to be found at the end of the mushroom season—in autumn or early winter.

    This species has been mistakenly referred to "A. citrina" (≡A. mappa).

    The original description of the present taxon includes some material on which no lavender staining was seen according to Coker's annotation on the herbarium packets.  RET's personal experience indicates that, without cold nights, many specimens of this mushroom show no lavender at all.  Hence, it is possible that Coker's collections include some material that might better be included under one of the two code named taxa (above).  Those taxa have larger and rounder spores than those found in A. lavendula.

    Based on limited experience, the lavender staining seems to RET to be much more common (certainly more widespread on the fruiting body) in specimens collected after a light frost or after a night when the temperature (allowing for windchill) has been below freezing.  This suggests that environmental factors (presumably low temperature) are correlated with the accentuation of lavender tinted regions and lavender staining on freshly cut surfaces.


    As an experiment (using Adobe Photoshop®), we increased the saturation of magenta to the maximum in a picture of a mushroom of "the A. lavendula group" from near the South Carolina-Georgia border and did the same for a picture of a yellow capped specimen of A. mappa (Batsch) Fr. from England.  The combined illustrations are shown immediately above.  Even at high magnification, the European specimen displayed very little magenta spotting and the North American specimen, as can be seen, has extensive areas of magenta and colors in which magenta is a significant component, especially in association with volva patches.  Both pictures were taken on Kodachrome ASA 64 slide film with a Canon AE-1 camera in autumn or early winter (although at different latitudes).  The pronounced difference is noticeable despite the fact that the film is not terribly sensitive to the lavender tints and failed to reproduce them well in photographs taken of specimens in which purplish lavender was a component of cap skin coloring.  In addition, the lack of lavender was also present on A. mappa caps that were less mature than the one pictured and in which the volva had not darkened so distinctly.  There was no magenta visible in the flesh of sectioned fruiting bodies of the same taxon.  There was also a very minimal reaction to maximum saturation of magenta in the case of white specimens of A. mappa.

    We continued the experiment with additional photographs of other photographs of "A. lavendula group" fruiting bodies taken in December at the same South Carolina site.  The same phenomena was observed—significant areas of the fruiting body (especially those that had seemed lavender to the naked eye) became strongly magenta.  One of the photos from the site shows extensive lavender coloration over most of the cap (first row, right, at the top of this page).  In this case, nearly the entire pileus became magenta as a result of the maximum saturation experiment ("hypermagenta test") (left).  To date, the hypermagenta test has been applied with negative results only to photographs of citrina-like material from Europe (France, Norway and the United Kingdom) and to specimens of the current taxon on which no lavender could be detected by the eye.  We are very interested in testing photographs (for which there are dried voucher specimens) from parts of Europe other than those cited above. 

    Recently collected material (2006, from North Carolina and Tennessee and showing the strongest lavender color RET has ever seen in the taxon) photographed with a digital camera (Olympus C-5500 Zoom) produced photographs that reacted to the hypermagenta test when there were distinct regions of lavender on the cap, the stem, or on exposed flesh (at right).

    Research on fruiting body chemistry (proteins) several years ago at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, was unable to differentiate between lavender staining and non-lavender staining material from Tennessee and North Carolina on the basis of a set of proteins studied.  On the other hand, comparison of the forms of hyphae and rate of hyphal growth in culture between a similar pair of sets of specimens showed a strong distinction, in research at the same university.  Perhaps these cultures were based on what we now know are distinct species in the "group." more?—R. E. Tulloss and L. Possiel
    brief editors RET

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