Amanita murinaster

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

The cap of Amanita murinaster is up to 90 mm wide, convex then plane, smooth, dry, pale to dull gray, with a nonstriate margin. Volval remains are present as flat, membranous or fibrillose(?) scales, particularly over the center, and are slightly paler gray than the cap.

The gills are adnate to free, thin, crowded, white to pale cream, with a concolorous edge. The short gills are present in at least one or two series.

The stem is up to 80 × 10 - 20 mm, narrowing upward, white to a little off-white, and smooth or in the lower part having minute upward-pointing scales. The ring is membranous, rather narrow, skirt-like, flared, striate on the upper surface, white, persistent for a while, but sometimes fragile and breaking into fragments or falling away. The base is narrow ellipsoid bulb, barely wider than the stem or even less distinguishable from the stem, white, with a narrow, membranous, free volval limb.

The spores measure 7.5 - 9.6 × 6.3 - 8.4 µm and are subglobose to broadly ellipsoid and amyloid. Clamps are absent at bases of basidia.

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).

The reader may wish to refer to Amanita peltigera D. A. Reid. In the discussion of the latter species we raise the possibility of finding taxa "transitional" between sections Amidella and Phalloideae. Here we have another candidate for such a discussion. The weak ring and plentiful inflated cells found in volval remnants on the cap of A. murinaster are strongly suggestive of section Amidella. However, the stem is clearly bulbous in one of Wood's illustrations which is a character of the Phalloideae. On the other hand the smaller of the two illustrated specimens has the stem base very slightly widened and a very shallow curve to the base of the bulb. This is reminiscent of the totally elongating stem in section Amidella. Pigmented cap and small subglobose to broadly ellipsoid spores make it unlikely that this taxon is associated with the known limbate species in section Lepidella. Revision of material of A. murinaster is needed and may prove valuable to our understanding of evolution in Amanita.—R. E. Tulloss and L. Possiel

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