Amanita strobilaceovolvata - Amanitaceae.org - Taxonomy and Morphology of Amanita and Limacella
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name Amanita strobilaceovolvata
name status nomen acceptum
author Beeli
english name "Pine Cone Volva Ringed Ringless Amanita"
intro

The following description is based on Beeli (1935).

cap The prominently umbonate cap of Amanita strobilaceovolvata is 60 - 120 mm wide, fleshy, conic-convex, glabrous, dark brown in the center and for the inner half of the cap's radius and otherwise yellow; it is dry, with a striate margin.  The cap skin can be pealed off the underlying flesh.  The cap flesh is firm and white—except for being yellowish below the cap skin.
gills The gills are free, somewhat pointed at both ends, crowded, yellowish-white, 4 mm broad, thin, and fragile.  There are two short gills for every seven gills extending from margin to stem.
stem The hollow stem of this mushroom is 120 - 220 × 7 - 10 mm, cylindric, fibrillose, smooth or sub-smooth, easily separated from the cap, and yellowish white.  The ring is membranous, white, superior, skirt-like, and fragile.  The flesh is firm and white.  The volva is saccate, pinkish white; the exterior surface is divided into lumpy or bulging regions so that it looks like a net bag full of fruit.  The volva sac is connected only at the stem's very base as depicted in Madame Goossens' watercolor.  The fleshy interior of the volva is orangish-brownish.
odor/taste This mushroom is odorless, and the taste is slightly acrid.
spores Based on the spore drawings of Gilbert (1941), the spores are 9.3 - 11.3 × 8.1 - 9.5 (-9.9) µm, subglobose to broadly ellipsoid and inamyloid.
discussion The present species was originally described from the Democratic Republic of Congo where it is said to occur singly in dry forest.

Gilbert (1941) makes the case that Amanita fibrillosa Beeli was based upon an old specimen of Amanita strobilaceovolvata.  However, Gilbert did not take into account several observations that do not support his proposal.  These are discussed on the taxon page for A. fibrillosa.

A number of African species are described as having a decorated exterior to the volva usually surface cracking producing darkened areolae, for example, Amanita zambiana Pegler & Piearce.  However, this form of patchiness on the volval exterior is different from bumpy decoration of the volval sac in the present species and is known from volval surfaces of species belonging in both sect. Caesareae and sect. Amanita (e.g., A. pudica.

Zhu L. Yang has described species of sect. Vaginatae with decorated volva from Yunnan Province, China.  One such example is A. verrucosivolva Zhu L. Yang (1997).  But in this species, while the exterior of the volval sac is divided into many regions, the regions do not bulge outward and are each decorated by a single, central wart.

The reader may wish to refer to other species of section Vaginatae with an annulate stipe.  Among these are Amanita madagascariensis (warted universal veil) and A. sp-Arora_01-555 (smooth universal veil).  Sporograph comparisons are available on the technical tab of this page.

Because this species is an annulate species of section Vaginatae, as are the other speices assigned to to the present stirps, it is assigned here despite lack of molecular evidence.

Amanita strobilaceovolvata sensu Pegler and Shah-Sm. was demonstrated to be based on a mixture of distinct taxa by Tang et al. (2015).—R. E. Tulloss
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