Amanita pseudoporphyria - Amanitaceae.org - Taxonomy and Morphology of Amanita and Limacella
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name Amanita pseudoporphyria
name status nomen acceptum
author Hongo
english name "Hongo's False Death Cap"
synonyms
?=Amanita indica R. P. Bhatt, Locq. & T. N. Lakh.
images
  • Amanita pseudoporphyria, Hunan Prov, China.Amanita pseudoporphyria, Hunan Prov, China.

    1. Amanita pseudoporphyria, Hunan Prov, China.

  • cap

    Fruiting bodies of Amanita pseudoporphyria are medium-sized to large, sometimes very large. The cap is 50 - 150 mm wide, convex to applanate, greyish to grey to grey-brown, darker in the center, innately fibrillose, and glabrous or covered with a few white to dirty white, membranous volval remnants; the cap's margin is smooth and non-appendiculate, but often with annulus remnants hanging on the margin; the cap's flesh is white.

    gills

    The gills are free to subfree and white; the short gills are attenuate.

    stem

    The stem is 80 - 130 × 5 - 20 (-40) mm, subcylindric to attenuate upwards, with a surface that is white and covered with white fibrillose to farinose squamules; the flesh is white; the stem's basal bulb is 10 - 30 (-50) mm wide, ventricose to fusiform, and often somewhat rooting. On the stem's base, the volva is limbate, with a free limb up to 50 cm high. The volva's outer surface is white to dirty white, occasionally greyish, while the inner surface is white. The annulus is apical to subapical, white, fragile, and fugacious or persistent.

    odor/taste We have never seen a description of the odor or taste of this mushroom.  It is a comestible, market species within its range.  Even within that range, it can be confused with toxic (even deadly) species.
    spores

    Basidiospores (6.0-) 7.0 - 9.0 (-10.5) × (4.5-) 5.0 - 6.5 (-7.5) µm, broadly ellipsoid to ellipsoid, amyloid. Clamps are absent from the bases of basidia.

    discussion

    This species was originally described from Japan. It is very common and widely distributed in China and often sold, together with A. manginiana sensu W. F. Chiu, in free markets.  Amanita pseudoporphyria is very similar to A. manginiana sensu W. F. Chiu, but differs from the latter mainly by its broad ellipsoid to ellipsoid spores and more abundant inflated cells in the volva.  Amanita indica R. P. Bhatt, Locq. & T. N. Lakh. may be synonymous with A. pseudoporphyria.—Zhu L. Yang

    This species is now known from northern India, Nepal, and Thailand in addition to southern China and Japan.—R. E. Tulloss

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