Go to technical description.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION: Amanita picea is a species of the oak forests of Andean Colombia. It is rarely collected; only two collections are known to me.

Its brownish black cap is 23 - 105 mm wide.

The gills of this species are free to very narrowly adnate, close to crowded, and white. The short gills are truncate.

It has a 40 - 100 × 10 - 30 mm stem with a pallid ground color that is sometimes decorated with dark fibrils. There is a persistent, skirt-like annulus on the stem.

The spores of this species measure (7.5-) 8.8 - 11.2 (-12.5) x (5.5-) 6.5 - 8.2 (-9.0) µm and are amyloid and broadly ellipsoid to ellipsoid (infrequently subglobose or elongate). No clamps are present at the bases of basidia.

The stipe's bulbous base is often decorated with rings of volval warts strongly suggesting the arrangement of warts on the lower stipe of Amanita muscaria (L.:Fr.) Lam. The arrangement of the volva and the truncate lamellulae might suggest this species is to be placed in Amanita section Amanita; however, its spores are distinctly amyloid. -- R. E. Tulloss

Photo: Dr. Roy E. Halling (Colombia).

Return to Section Validae page.

Last changed 16 August 2004.
This page is maintained by R. E. Tulloss.
Copyright 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 by Rodham E. Tulloss.
Photograph copyright 2001 by Roy E. Halling.