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Technical description (t.b.d.)

BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The following is largely based on the original description (Wood 1997).

The cap of Amanita fuscosquamosa is up to 50 mm wide, convex then plano-convex, dry,  dull cream, with a nonstriate margin. The cap is decorated with flat, irregular scales that are dark gray-brown with a slight red-wine tint.

The gills are free, thin, crowded, white, with a darkened edge. The short gills are present in at least two series.

The stem is up to 50  × 5 mm, fibrillose, and dark gray. The ring is submembranous, striate above, and dull brown. [According to Wood's drawing, the ring is rather narrow.]  The base has an ellipsoid bulb that is not much broader than the stem. The bulb has a narrow concentric ring of volval material on its upper part and is otherwise undecorated. 

The spores measure 7.2 - 8.4 (-8.7) × 5.4 - 7.2 µm and are broadly ellipsoid and strongly amyloid. Clamps are absent at bases of basidia.

Wood describes the mushroom as occurring in "tall open forests" from the state of New South Wales, Australia. No information about possible symbionts is provided.  This species is known only from the type collection. 

Wood remarks that at first glance the cap of this species suggests a species of Lepiota. Wood remarks on the unusual characters of a small, dark annulus and dark volva on a pale cap. However a number of species of eastern and southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent share these characters but have slightly different coloration. In all the following examples, in mature material, the cap can be quite pallid in contrast to the volva, especially away from the cap's center: A fritillaria (Berk.) Sacc., A. pilosella Zhu L. Yang (slightly narrower spores than in the present species), and A. demissa Corner & Bas (narrower spores than the present species). Amanita fuscosquamosa is distinguished by its particular pigmentation (the red-wine tint of the volva and the dull brown annulus). While the annulus is occasionally lost in individual specimens of several species within section Validae, it is unusual to find one described as submembranous or "fibrillose" [which, given Wood's illustration we take to mean something like "felted"]. We wish to thank Zhu L. Yang for correspondence, data, and photographs supporting the variation of cap pigment in species such as A. fritillaria.  -- R. E. Tulloss and L. Possiel

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Last changed 26 December 2006.
This page is maintained by R. E. Tulloss.
Copyright 2006 by Rodham E. Tulloss.