Amanita nishidae - Amanitaceae.org - Taxonomy and Morphology of Amanita and Limacella
[print] [map]
name Amanita nishidae
name status nomen provisorum
author Tulloss
english name "Nishida's Ringless Amanita"
images
  • Amanita nishidae, Chiricahua Mtns., Cochise Co., Arizona, U.S.A.Amanita nishidae, Chiricahua Mtns., Cochise Co., Arizona, U.S.A.

    1. Amanita nishidae, Chiricahua Mtns., Cochise Co., Arizona, U.S.A.

    • intro This species is dedicated to Dr. Florence Nishida, who encouraged RET to join the Chiricahua Mycoflora Project and played a large role in directing that productive venture.  At long last, undescribed species of the Chiricahua Mountains are being poste on-line.  This species, which many people collecting within its range have been calling "A. fulva," is named for Dr. Nishida in deep appreciation of her efforts, her patience, and her generosity.
    cap The cap of A. nishidae is 41 - 90 mm wide; young specimens are fulvous or browner with olivaceous tint, soon fading to dull somewhat orangish brown (still with trace of olivaceous tint) and then palest at margin, and are finally orange-tan in age.  The cap shape is broadly campanulate to convex to plano convex to nearly planar, and umbonate.  The cap surface is tacky, and matt to subshiny.  The flesh is white to off-white, often faintly brownish or grayish in the center, just under the cap's skin; it is unchanging when cut or bruised.  The cap margin is striate (although very slightly at first); eventually, the striations take up 15% to 35% of the cap radius.  Volval remnants on the cap are commonly absent.  They are present occasionally as a small, soft, easily removed, membranous, white patch in the center of the cap that develops orange-brown stains.
    gills The gills are free to narrowly adnate, with a rather long decurrent line on the top of the stem (use hand lens), sometimes with a decurrent tooth, crowded, off-white to cream (sometimes the same color as the cap's marginal area, within 10 mm of same) in mass, white to off-white or somewhat watersoaked in side view, sometimes having their free edge colored (brownish orange) in the last few mm nearest the cap's margin.  The short gills are truncate, of diverse lengths, unevenly distributed, and infrequent.
    stem The ringless stem of this mushroom is 91 - 132 × 8 - 15 mm, with a pallid ground color.  Raised fibrils on the stem turn brown or darken from handling or from drying in situ.  The stem narrows upward and flares (sometimes only very slightly) at the very top in older specimens, otherwise not.  The stem often is decorated with longitudinally oriented fibrils that are the same color as (or slightly paler than) the cap.  The stem's flesh is white or sometimes grayish to very pale grayish in the lower half, becoming somewhat sordid in the stem base.  The stem becomes hollow with age.  The volva is sacklike, membranous, with exterior soft and cottony to leathery, and off-white on the exterior surface with orange-brown to orangish to ochraceous stains (especially in upper portion).  The interior surface of the volva is pale orange or the color of the pileus margin or slightly paler than the pileus margin.  The sack is 34 - 74 × 18 - 19 mm and appressed to the stem only at very base of the stem.  The volva's internal limb is small, but distinct at first, located about one third of the distance from the point of attachment to the stem to highest point of the sack.
    odor/taste The odor of this mushroom is indistinct.  The taste is bland at first, with a faintly bitter, a faintly metallic aftertaste.
    spores The spores measure (9.0-) 10.4 - 13.3 (-14.8) × (9.1-) 9.8 - 12.6 (-13.6) µm, globose to subglobose, rarely broadly ellipsoid, and inamyloid.  Clamps are not present at the bases of basidia.
    discussion The specimens examined to date are all from Cochise Co., Arizona, U.S.A. However, a very similar amanita was collected in the Neovolcanic Zone of Mexico (in the state of Tlaxcala).—R. E. Tulloss
    brief editors RET

    [top]