Technical Description. (t.b.d.)

BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The following description is based on Reid (1980). The description of this species is based on the only known specimen.

The cap of Amanita peltigera is 55 mm wide, plano-convex, with a smooth and naked margin. The gray cap is almost entirely covered by a very large, single, roughly circular, white patch of volval tissue. 

The stem is 50 x 10 mm, with a swollen rooting base, white with a hint of grayish penciling. No annulus was found on the type specimen. It is not clear from the original description whether the volva is truly saccate or only limbate. The presence of a large bulb suggests the latter is the case, and this is confirmed by my examination of the type at Kew.

According to Reid, the spores of this species measure (6.5-) 7.5 - 9.0 x (6.0-) 7.0 - 7.5 (-8.5) µm and are subglobose or ovate to very broadly ellipsoid (infrequently globose, infrequently ellipsoid) and amyloid. Clamps are absent at base of basidia.  My measurements of spores from the type specimen are (7.6-) 7.9 - 10.1 (-11.9) x (6.3-) 6.7 - 8.5 (-9.1) µm.

This species is originally described from the state of Western Australia. No ecological information was recorded. 

Reid does not discuss placement of this species in a section. Wood (1997) proposes section Validae. The absence of an annulus is problematic in both cases. Reid's illustration showing thick-walled hyphae dominating the volva (I found thick-walled elements rather common in the volva, but not to the extent of Reid's illustration) reminds one of the similar hyphae in several species of section Phalloideae. My examination of the type shows that the volva is not as extensively layered as are the volvas in sect. Amidella.  A membranous volva is unknown in section Validae.  If we take into account recent molecular work supporting Bas' (1969) notion that section Phalloideae may have arisen from an ancestor that could be placed in section Amidella, then the possibility must be acknowledged that a mushroom assignable to section Phalloideae might exist that lacks a well-formed annulus. It is also possible that there was an annulus that was lost from the type specimen of A. peltigera. -- R. E. Tulloss

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Last changed 18 September 2006.
This page is maintained by R. E. Tulloss.
Copyright 2005, 2006 by Rodham E. Tulloss.