Amanita pseudovolvata - Amanitaceae.org - Taxonomy and Morphology of Amanita and Limacella
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name Amanita pseudovolvata
name status nomen provisorum
author Tulloss
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  • Amanita pseudovolvata, New Jersey, U.S.A.Amanita pseudovolvata, New Jersey, U.S.A.

    1. Amanita pseudovolvata, New Jersey, U.S.A.

    • intro This species has been widely misidentified as either Amanita volvata or A. peckiana in the past.  In the field it is most often identifiable because of
    staining reactions typical of the majority of species of section Amidella

    the species' rather small fruiting bodies

    restriction to eastern North America

    limited amount of flocculence on the upper stem even in the earliest stages of cap expansion and

    evident striations on the cap margin even as that margin first appears above the rim of the volva.
    The reader is cautioned that identification of specimens of section Amidella in eastern North America without use of microscopy produces uncertain results as a rule.
    cap The cap of Amanita pseudovolvata is 15 - 68 (-99) mm wide, subglobose then hemispheric, then convex (often with a slight umbo), then planoconvex, and occasionally finally depressed to concave.  The cap may be tacky at first.  Eventually it becomes subshiny to shiny.  It is 0.5 - 5 ( 7.5) mm thick at the stem.  The cap of A. pseudovolvata is dirty cream to off-white to white, and, at times, is darkest near the center.  It occasionally stains faint pink or pinkish brown or sordid pink when cut or scratched, and always stains red-brown or brick in old wounds.  The margin is usually short striate depending on conditions of growth and age of specimens, and is frequently noticeably striate just as cap expands from the volval sac.  The cap margin is appendiculate with small bits of white fibrillose material that become red-brown or brick or clay color.  The volval remnants on the cap are (1) parts of a thin, broken submembranous to felted or radially fibrillose layer (the inner layer of a complexly layered volva) or (2) merely radially fibrillose and easily removed scales, becoming smaller towards the margin.  The volval material is originally white and quickly turns red-brown or brick, eventually drying to a pale pinkish beige.  Occasionally a segment of the complete volva may remain on the cap as well as the parts of the innermost volval layer; when this happens, the collector will find this "all layer" fragment in the form of a whitish, leathery, membranous patch.
    gills The gills of Amanita pseudovolvata are free to narrowly attached, sometimes with a short to long decurrent line on the top of the stem, and close to crowded.  They are whitish to off-white to pale cream to cream in mass, white to off-white in side-view, and bruise like the cap and the volval remnants on the cap.  The cap margin is decorated with white flocculence that becomes red-brown or brick.  The short gills of A. pseudovolvata are truncate to subtruncate to rounded truncate to subattenuate.
    stem The ringless stem measures 22 - 90 (-116) × 2.5 - 8.5 mm.  It is whitish to faint cream or sordid pale cream, bruising red-brown or brick in old wounds, and decorated with white powder or flocculence that becomes red-brown to brick over time or with handling.  The stem narrows upward or is cylindric.  The bulbless stem becomes hollow in part with the stuffing occasionally yellowish and reminiscent of fine sawdust.  The sack-like volva is subglobose to ovoid (sometimes with an extended limb on one side), 13 - 37 × 7 - 22 mm, whitish, soft, tough, leathery, usually dividing into two or three lobes, and layered (with most of inner layer left on cap).
    odor/taste Amanita pseudovolvata lacks an odor except sometimes in wet weather when it smells faintly fungoid or like freshly cleaned laundry.  It does not have a taste.
    spores The spores measure (5.0-) 8.0 - 11.0 (-13.5) × (3.8-) 4.5 - 6.0 (-7.8) µm and are ellipsoid to elongate to cylindric and amyloid.  Clamps are not to be found at bases of basidia.
    discussion —R. E. Tulloss
    brief editors RET

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