Amanita ovoidea - Amanitaceae.org - Taxonomy and Morphology of Amanita and Limacella
[print] [map]
name Amanita ovoidea
name status nomen acceptum
author (Bull. : Fr.) Link
english name "European Egg Amidella"
images

  • 1. Amanita ovoidea, France.


  • 2. Amanita ovoidea, France, 1888 plate of Barla.


  • 3. Amanita ovoidea, Italy.

    • cap

    The cap of Amanita ovoidea is 90 - 350 mm wide, white, moist, hemispheric then convex, with a nonstriate, appendiculate margin. The flesh is white. The volval remnants are floccose.

    gills

    The gills are chalk white, narrow, densely serrate, free, ventricose, and with a "subtly" floccose margin.

    stem

    The stem is 100 - 150 × 25 - 50 mm, white, completely floccose, and thickening toward the base. In the area where one might expect an annulus in another species, the flocculence is so thick that it has been described as capable of being spread with a knife like a soft cheese. The saccate volva is white or reddening.

    spores

    The spores measure (6.3-) 7.5 - 10.5 (-15.0) × (4.9-) 5.2 - 7.0 (-8.4) µm and are broadly ellipsoid to ellipsoid to elongate and amyloid.

    discussion

    The species was originally described from France. This species has commonly been placed in section Amidella, but it differs from most of the species in the section that are known to me. The type species of the section is A. volvata (Peck) Lloyd, a species notable for having a cap margin that is at least somewhat striate (the character is more pronounced in other taxa closely related to A. volvata). Short gills in the type species are truncate. Bruised flesh or exposed from the inner side of the volva may turn pink at first and then (usually strongly) red-brown in A. volvata. The other taxa placed in section Amidella that are most closely related to A. ovoidea are A. proxima Dumée of Mediterranean Europe and A. neoovoidea Hongo of eastern Asia.

    This species is widely eaten in the Mediterranean region.  In Turkey, at a restaurant supposedly catering to "German" tourists, my eldest son was served a steak on top of which was a whole, grilled specimen of A. ovoidea.—R. E. Tulloss

    brief editors RET

    [top]