Technical description (t.b.d.)

BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The cap of Amanita lepiotoides is 60 - 120 mm wide, hemispheric, then convex, dry, with a decurved margin, becoming striate at marturity. The cap is pure white, then cream with a tint of pink tint or ochraceous, and fauve-brown or grayish fauve-brown. The flesh is thick, white at first, then reddish, salmon or red-brown on exposure to air or on bruising. The volva is present as large, thick floccose/felted scales over the cap's center and fine fibrillose scales near the margin.

The gills are free, rather distant, cream or yellowish white or pale white, rather large, thick, and almond shaped. The short gills are sometimes uncommon, rounded to rounded truncate to squarely truncate, and numerous.

The stem is 100 - 200 x 10 - 25 mm, slender, subcylindric, and yellowish white to concolorous with the cap. The flesh is white turning salmon and stuffed to hollow. The ample, thick, membranous, subglobose volva often has an inner layer of floccose/felted material.

The spores measure (7.3-) 8.3 - 13.8 (-21.0) x (4.8-) 5.5 - 7.7 (-9.1) µm and are ellipsoid to elongate (occasionally cylindrical, occasionally broadly ellipsoid) and amyloid. Clamps are uncommon at bases of basidia.

Amanita lepiotoides was originally described from mountains in southern France (Dép. Alpes-Maritimes). It is known from other localities in southern France as far west as the Pyrénées Orientales and from Italy. It is reportedly associated with Pine, Fir, Beech, and (possibly) Chestnut.

This species is notable for the thickness of the inner layer of the volval which is left on the cap. Along with A. curtipes E. J. Gilbert, A. ponderosa Malenç. & R. Heim in Malenç., and A. valens (E. J. Gilbert) Bertault of the Mediterranean region, A. lepiotoides is more closely related to the type (A. volvata (Peck) Lloyd) of section Amidella than is Amanita ovoidea (Bull.:Fr.) Link, another European species currently believed to belong in this section. -- R. E. Tulloss

Photos: F. Massart (top, France); Copy of plate: Barla, J. B., Les Champignons des Alpes-Maritimes. 1888. pl. 8 bis (bottom, France).

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Last changed 1 November 2004.
This page is maintained by R. E. Tulloss.
Copyright 2004 by Rodham E. Tulloss.
Photographs copyright 2004 by Francis Massart.