Amanita pleropus - Amanitaceae.org - Taxonomy and Morphology of Amanita and Limacella
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name Amanita pleropus
name status nomen acceptum
author (Kalchbr. & Macowan) D. A. Reid
english name "African Spindle-Bulb Lepidella"
intro

The following description is based on Reid & Eicker (1991, 1996).

cap

The cap of A. pleropus is 40 - 85 mm wide, hemispherical-campanulate, then planar, pinkish, with a nonstriate, appendiculate margin extending beyond the edge of the gills.  The cap is entirely covered by brown or dark rusty volva, which disrupts into crowded, appressed, felty, polygonal or areolate, flat scales, sometimes spine-like (sometimes touching at their tips), especially at the center which has distinct purplish tints, appearing more radially fibrillose toward the margin.  The flesh is buff.  The cap suggests certain species of Agaricus.

gills

The gills are ochraceous or cream, sometimes developing a gray tint in aging, and adnexed to almost free, rather distant, proportionately quite broad.

stem

The stem is 50 - 90 × 6 - 20 mm, cylindrical, slightly inflated toward base to 14 - 20 mm wide, creamy-white above the ring, fibrillose developing a golden tint and become brown where handled below the ring, with brown fibrils or brown zig-zag bands as volval remnants on the lower portion of the stem.  The ring is on the upper third of the stem, well developed, skirt-like, membranous, felty to cottony below, white above, buffy brown or cream colored below.  The bulb is subrooting and fusiform that may penetrate into the substrate or go off on a slight angle.  The flesh is white.

The smell is nil or indistinct according to Reid & Eicker (1991), unpleasantly radish-like or like "fungus sauce" according the original description.

spores The spores measure 9.0 - 11.5 × 6.2 - 8.0 µm or 9 -13 × 7 - 9 µm.  Spores from a spore print are 10 -12 (-13) x 7.5 - 9 (-11) µm.  Clamps are present at bases of basidia.
discussion This species is reported to occur with Acacia and Jakaranda.  It can grow in open grassland without trees present and has been observed in large ferry rings on lawns, as in a number of other species in subsection Vittadiniae.  In this subsection, this species can be placed within stirps Vittadinii.  The cap of the present species suggests that of a species of Macrolepiota.  While it is the cap skin that breaks up in Macrolepiota, it is the volva that breaks up in Amanita subsection Vittadiniae; and there is no cap skin proper in the latter subsection.—R. E. Tulloss
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