Amanita velosa - Amanitaceae.org - Taxonomy and Morphology of Amanita and Limacella
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name Amanita velosa
name status nomen acceptum
author (Peck) Lloyd
english name "Bittersweet Orange Ringless Amanita"
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  • 1. Amanita velosa, California, U.S.A.



  • 2. Amanita velosa, California, U.S.A.



  • 3. Amanita velosa, California, U.S.A.



  • 4. Amanita velosa, Feb., 1998, Sonoma Co., California, U.S.A.


  • 5. Amanita velosa, white specimen, Fort Ord, Monterey Co., California, USA.   RET 275-1

  • Amanita velosaAmanita velosa

    6. Amanita velosa, mixed colors, California, U.S.A.

    • cap

    Amanita velosa has a cap 42 - 110 mm wide that is pale yellowish orange to pale orangish beige to pale orange or bittersweet orange to orange or yellowish orange to brownish orange with darker or paler streaks (possibly due to action of rain), sometimes becoming paler (e.g., pale orange to cream) toward margin.  The pigment is sometimes washed out entirely by heavy rain.  Occasionally, an entirely white specimen is found.  The fleshy cap lacks an umbo or has a low, broad one and often bears one or more white membranous patches of volva.  The marginal striations of the cap are short—usually having length of about 10% to 20% of the cap radius.

    gills

    The gills are free to narrowly adnate, crowded, off-white to pale cream to pale orangish cream in mass, 4 - 10.5 mm broad, with some reverse forking and anastomosing present; the short gills are more or less truncate, plentiful, unevenly distributed, of diverse lengths, occasionally adjacent to the stipe as well as to the margin.

    stem

    The stem is 76 - 133 × 9 - 26 mm white to pale orange-white above, white below, and exannulate; it bears a robust, white, membranous, sack-like volva.

    odor/taste The odor of this species is variously reporated as lacking to faintly fungoid to faintly fishy to faintly sweet.  The taste is said to be faintly sweet and slightly nut-like, or very pleasant by Californians who enjoy eating A. velosa.
    spores

    The spores measure (8.7-) 9.1 - 12.0 (-16.3) × (7.0-) 7.7 - 10.0 (-13.0) µm and are subglobose to broadly ellipsoid (infrequently globose or ellipsoid) and inamyloid.  Clamps are not present at bases of basidia.

    discussion

    Amanita velosa occurs with oak.

    The species is known from Oregon and California, U.S.A. and from the Baja California Peninsula, Mexico.

    Nearly white specimens have been misdetermined as a European species, A. vaginata var. alba Gillet (sometimes mistakenly called "Amanita alba," which is an old [not currently accepted] name for a European species of Amanita sect, Amidella).  Based on available evidence, A. vaginata var. alba does not occur in the Western Hemisphere.—R. E. Tulloss

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