Amanita pseudocrocea - Amanitaceae.org - Taxonomy and Morphology of Amanita and Limacella
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name Amanita pseudocrocea
name status nomen provisorum
author Tulloss
english name "Eastern American Saffron Ringless Amanita"
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  • Amanita pseudocrocea nom. prov., San Francisco de Temezontla, Tlaxcala edo., Mexico.Amanita pseudocrocea nom. prov., San Francisco de Temezontla, Tlaxcala edo., Mexico.

    1. Amanita pseudocrocea nom. prov., San Francisco de Temezontla, Tlaxcala edo., Mexico.

    • intro The following is based on original research of R. E. Tulloss.
    cap The cap of A. pseudocrocea is 42 - 82 mm wide, pale brownish orange to orange or peach-orange (near 5A4) with darker disc or orange-tan and then paler at margin, sometimes becoming bleached to tannish over disc (similar to the change in A. cochiseana), subglobose to thimble-shaped at first with incurved margin, sometimes becoming broadly campanulate, later planoconvex, umbonate, tacky, and dull.  The underside of the cap (between the gills) may become pale orange on drying.  The cap's flesh is white except for a thin orange brown layer below the cap's skin.  The flesh is unchanging when cut or bruised and 2 - 6 mm thick above the stem.  The cap's margin is striate for 15% to 20% of the cap's radius, deeply grooved, and not appendiculate.  There may be no volval remnants on the cap; or volval remnants may appear as a single patch covering much of the cap's center.  In the latter case, the remnants are white or whitish, membranous, easily removed, irregular, and smooth; such remnants have a fibrillose-matted surface, and sometimes show some slight rusty brown bruising or staining.  The patch sometimes represents more than half of the original volva.
    gills The gills of this species are free, without a decurrent line on the stem, subdistant to close to crowded, off-white to pale cream to cream to yellowish cream to pale orangish cream in mass, off-white to pale off-white to very pale cream in side view, and drying to a pale sordid yellow or pinkish orange.  The gills bear a fine white flocculence on their edges that may brown in age or on drying or after injury.  The gills show some forking and are 3 - 6.5 mm broad.  The short gills are truncate, rather uncommon, and sometimes one finds a series of ten or more adjacent gills with no intervening short gills.  The short gills are of diverse lengths.
    stem The stem is 38 - 146 × 7.5 - 17 mm, pallid, yellowish white or white below and very pale orangish white on upper ?? to upper two-thirds, sometimes slightly browning from handling, sometimes with dark brown fibrils, narrowing upward, and flaring (sometimes barely) at the very top of the stem.  The orangish white region is often pulverulent at first or even has a well-defined flocculose-pulverulent sheath at first; sometimes this sheath has a distinct lower edge that becomes orange-brown or has a web-like arrangement of fibrils connecting the cap's margin to the sheath.  With age the stem's upper surface becomes finely punctate near the top or (if a sheath was present) the sheath cracks roughly horizontally and breaks up into scales.  Eventually, the stem is finely longitudinally striatulate below with some small raised fibrils.  The ringless stem's flesh is white, unchanging when cut or bruised, although occasionally brown in larva tunnels, and is hollow or stuffed at first&nbp; The volva is saccate with up to 5 lobes, white at first, soon getting rusty or light brownish stains or spots where exposed, soft, smooth, membranous, leathery, rather tough, 17 - 37 × 10 - 23 mm, flaring at first, then becoming appressed to the stem, and moderately easily broken into large fragments during expansion of the fruiting body.  The volva's internal limb is rather smalland apparently set rather low on the inner surface of the main volval limb—probably between the point of attachment to the stem to about one fifth the distance up the free part of the main limb.
    odor/taste The odor of this species is reported as faintly fungoid or indistinct or pleasant.  The taste has not been recorded.
    spores The spores of this species measure (7.8-) 8.6 - 10.8 (-21) × (6.4-) 7.2 - 9.5 (-17.8) µm and are subglobose to broadly ellipsoid (rarely globose or ellipsoid) and inamyloid. There are no clamps at the bases of basidia.
    discussion The currently known range of this species extends from Ohio and Kentucky, U.S.A. to the neovolcanic zone of central Mexico.  It occurs in oak (Quercus) dominated deciduous forest as well as in mixed forest including oak and pine (Pinus).

    Amanita pseudocrocea is one of two or more North American taxa that are sometimes incorrectly determined as one of the European species of Amanita stirps Crocea.  Another North American taxon that the reader may wish to compare with the present taxon is A. americrocea Tulloss nom. prov..—R. E. Tulloss
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