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Amanita elongatispora A. E.
Wood [epithet spelling corrected] "Wood's Elongate-Spored Lepidella" :: Technical description (t.b.d.) BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The following is largely based on the original description (Wood 1997). The cap of Amanita elongatispora is up to 60 mm wide, convex then flattened convex, smooth, appearing slightly silky, dry, pale gray-brown to gray-brown, with a nonstriate margin [possibly appendiculate?]. Volval remains are present as scattered, submembranous warts, flat, pale gray to buff-gray. The gills are free, moderately thick, crowded, cream, with a concolorous margin. The short gills are present in at least two series. The stem is up to 110 × 13 mm, white to cream, smooth to slightly fibrillose, narrowing downward toward the bulb, with a narrowly radicating, spindle-shaped bulb. The ring is submembranous, cream, somewhat persistent or fragile. [The ring is so small it is barely noticeable in Wood's illustration.] The bulb is white to cream and has, on its upper part, a series of fibrillar zones that may be missing in some specimens. The spores measure 9.0 - 11.1 × 4.4 - 5.8 µm and are elongate to cylindric and amyloid. Clamps are scattered and often small at bases of basidia. [Note: Wood's unusual use of Bas' terms for spore shape is particularly noticeable with regard to this species. If the average ratio of length to width of a spore is 1.98 then surely nearly half the spores must of had length to width ratio of 2 or greater, hence calling the spores "elongate" significantly misrepresents the spore shape by omitting the fact that nearly half the spores are cylindric. Readers of Wood's (1997) work on Australian Amanitas should be aware that he is apparently only using presenting average values of Q where most researchers of amanitas provide raw data.] Wood described this species from New South Wales, Australia, as occurring in "moist hardwood forests" and Angophora costata woodland. The genus Angophora (Myrtle family) is a close relative of Eucalyptus and is often included under the informal term "eucalypt" (wikipedia). Wood places the present species in section Validae although he gives no reason for it. Species of section Validae almost always, so far as is known, have a subhymenium (cells which support the basidia) comprised of inflated cells, comparatively short basidia, the presence of a membranous and persistent ring on the stem, and none of the species that have been assigned to section Validae previous to Wood's work have clamps on the basidial bases. Therefore the present taxon seems most appropriately placed in section Lepidella. The fact that Wood considers A. griseoconia D. A. Reid (another species Wood places in section Validae instead of section Lepidella) as a very similar species supports the above view. Within section Lepidella and considering Bas' (1969) key to his stirpes of subsection Solitariae, the closest match is with stirps Chlorinosma--a group that currently contains taxa from the Americas and central Africa. Since in Wood's (1997) order of presentation A.
elongatispora is the first species assigned to section Validae,
this may be an appropriate page at which tor raise the concern that his
phrase "subhymenial cells" (which he differentiates from cells
directly supporting a basidium) is not used as I am used to seeing it
used by other authors dealing with species of Amanita. He appears
to be discussing not the tissue of similar cells that either directly
support a basidium or are adjacent to such cells but to the various
elements of the divergent structure between the subhymenium and the
central group of cells that run from the cap flesh to the gill edge in
an Amanita gill. If this is the case, then we can have no
certainty in comparing descriptions of the gill tissue in Amanita
species by others to the descriptions of Wood. The unusual usage of
"subhymenium" is particularly evident in Wood's description of
Amanita flavella (1997: 815) in which he describes basidia
arising from "strongly inflated" cells and then says that the
subhymenium includes "hyphae" that are "somewhat
inflated." Confusing use of terms is one of the factors that
contribute to Wood's descriptions being difficult to interpret and use. Return to Section Lepidella page. Last changed 26 December 2006. |