Amanita suballiacea - Amanitaceae.org - Taxonomy and Morphology of Amanita and Limacella
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name Amanita suballiacea
name status nomen acceptum
author (Murrill) Murrill
english name "False Garlic-Odored Death Cap"
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  • Amanita suballiaceae, South Fork Nature Ctr., Van Buren Co., Arkansas, U.S.A.Amanita suballiaceae, South Fork Nature Ctr., Van Buren Co., Arkansas, U.S.A.

    1. Amanita suballiaceae, South Fork Nature Ctr., Van Buren Co., Arkansas, U.S.A.

    • intro The following description is based on the minimal original description and on original research by RET.  This is one of the species that will often turn bright yellow in response to a drop of a strong base (like 5-10%KOH) on the cap.
    cap According to Murrill's (1941) original description, the cap of Amanita suballiacea is 30 - 40 mm wide, plano-convex, smooth, white, slightly viscid, with a nonstriate margin.  The flesh is thin, white, and unchanging.
    gills The gills are "just" free and not connected to the stem by a line, crowded, white, unchanging.
    stem The stem is up to 90 × 5 - 10 mm, slightly expanded at the top, solid, white, with a thin membranous patch of limbate volva at the top of the bulb. The ring on the stem is white, membranous, thin, weak, apical or nearly so, and "hanging like a wet skirt."  The stem's bulb is ellipsoid and may be deeply buried in the substrate.
    odor/taste The species is reported to have a strong odor of garlic which persists for some time in dried material.  As a precautionary measure, this species should be considered deadly POISONOUS.
    spores The spores measure (7.2-) 7.5 - 9.5 (-9.8) × 6.5 - 8.0 (-8.2) µm and are subglobose to broadly ellipsoid to barely ellipsoid (infrequently globose) and weakly amyloid. Clamps are absent at base of basidia.  [Note: The spore dimensions provided by Jenkins (1986) are apparently a typographical error.  Curiously, Murrill also misdescribed the spores in his original description—as globose and 6 µm in diameter.  The dimensions given above are from my study of the type.]
    discussion The species was originally described from Florida, USA and is reported to have been associated with liveoak and loblolly pine.  The species may occur in the states along the US coast of the Gulf of Mexico as well as in states overlapping the Mississippi River valley.

    Among other amanitas of the Atlantic Coastal Plain of North America, the odor of garlic is also present in A. alliacea (Murrill) Murrill—a white species with a small limbate volva presently assigned to Amanita sect. Lepidella.

    Among the collection of names of white taxa presently assigned to Amanita sect. Phalloideae in the eastern USA, the size and shape of the spores of A. suballiacea set it apart.  Its spores are proportionately narrower than the spores of A. bisporigera G. F. Atk. and proportionately broader than those of A. magnivelaris Peck and the taxa of the A. elliptosperma G. F. Atk. "group."  Whether other taxa with spores of this form exist is an open question, but no other name exists for such a species.  The reader may want to examine the recently revised key to the taxa of sect. Phalloideae in North America.—R. E. Tulloss
    brief editors RET

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