BRIEF DESCRIPTION: [Except for distribution data, taken from the description of Bas (1969).]  Amanita gymnopus is a medium to large species.  It gives its name to the curious Amanita subsection Gymnopodae Bas.  The dry cap is 50 - 110 mm wide, white to pale yellowish to brownish, convex to plane or concave, and often subumbonate.  The cap's margin is nonstriate and slightly appendiculate.  The volva on the cap comprises thin, submembranous, scattered patches (white to brownish ochraceous).

The gills are free, rather crowded, 5 - 10 mm broad, thick, pale ochraceous cream to deep ochraceous; the short gills are rounded-attenuate.

The stem is 60 - 140 x 7 - 11 mm, solid, firm, white to pale yellowish or pale pinkish brown, pruinose to subsquamulose near the top, nearly glabrous below, and tapers upward.  The stipe's clavate base is 16 - 25 mm wide and is often decorated with rhizoids (see illustrations, above).  The stem context is white to yellowish and turns slowly reddish brown when exposed. The annulus is subapical, skirt-like, narrow, whitish to pale yellowish, striate above, and often disappears as the mushroom expands.

The odor is strong and unpleasant.

The spores measure 5 - 7 x 5 - 6.5 µm and are globose to subglobose to broadly ellipsoid and amyloid.  Clamps are present on bases of basidia.

This species was originally described from tropical forest in Malaya.  It has now been reported from Hunan Prov., China, and Japan.

Amanita gymnopus is the type of Amanita subsection Gymnopodae Bas (the "Barefoot Lepidellas").  The other species assigned to that section by Bas is A. ochrophylla (Cooke & Massee) Cleland.  D. A. Reid (1978, 1980) described A. ochrophylloides D.A. Reid from the state of Victoria, Australia.  Tulloss, Halling, and Mueller are soon to publish A. conara Tulloss, Halling, & G. M. Muell. from Costa Rica -- the first new taxa described in subsection Gymnopodae from the Americas.  When it was first described, A. ochraceobulbosa A. E. Wood was proposed to be a member of subsection Gymnopodae; however, from the original description itself, the placement seems unlikely to be correct. -- R. E. Tulloss