Amanita rhodophylla - Amanitaceae.org - Taxonomy and Morphology of Amanita and Limacella
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name Amanita rhodophylla
name status nomen acceptum
author Beeli
english name "Pink-Gilled Limbed Amanita"
synonyms
non Amanita rhodophylla Imaz. & S. Toki nom. illeg.
intro The following description is based on Beeli (1935).
cap The cap of Amanita rhodophylla is 80 mm wide, yellowish-white, becoming satiny in drying, broadly campanulate-convex, smooth, with a lightly striate margin.  The volva is absent.  The flesh is white and firm.
gills Gills are free, pink, rounded at the stem end, and 5 mm broad.
stem Its stem is 120 × 7 - 11 mm, solid, white, markedly narrowing upward, fibrillose, and smooth, with a bulbous base.  The stem is easily detachable from the cap.  The ring is thin, membranous, white, skirt-like, and becomes satiny on drying.
odor/taste The species is odorless.  The taste is acrid.
spores Beeli (whose spore measurements often appear to be incorrect) reported that the spores measured 4 - 6 µm in diameter and are globose and inamyloid.  Gilbert (1940) illustrates only a single spore in the proper position to be measured; it is 8.3 × 7.4 µm which is subglobose.
discussion The present species was originally described from the Democratic Republic of Congo and said to be rather abundant in forests.

Since the stipe is not totally elongating, this species belongs in Amanita sect. Amanita. The watercolor of Madame Goossens clearly shows a large bulb on the base of the stipe and the volva is limbate rather than saccate.  Indeed the specimen suggests A. virosa Lam. as Gilbert (1941) observes.  Other species known to have both bulbs, membranous limbs, and inamyloid spores fall in Amanita series Pudicae (from Africa) and Amanita series Umbrinellae (from South America and Australia).  Some of the South American species are associated with trees from the Caesalpinaceae in tropical forests.  Others are known from the southern cone of South America associated with Southern Beech (Nothofagus).  The Australian species are known to be associated at least with eucalypts.  It is interesting to speculate that these taxa probably of Gondwanan origin may be relictual descendents of ancestors in section Amanita and basal to section Caesarea) as we know the sections today.—R. E. Tulloss
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