Go to technical description. (t.b.d.)

BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The 35 - 86 mm wide cap of A. salmonescens is white to off-white, tacky when wet, and a bit shiny when dry. In the button stage, the cap is spherical; at maturity, it becomes planar and may be depressed in the center. It may take on pinkish or reddish brown tints in spots when old. The flesh is white up to 5 mm or more thick over the stem and may stain pinkish in areas of damage by insect larvae. The margin is nonstriate and curved under at first, but is straight and sometimes slightly striate and/or splitting in age. Volval remants are large and coarse, pyramidal or truncate-pyramidal, and lifted at their margins. Their base is polygonal. The warts range from white to grayish or dark gray with age.

The gills of this speces are free to narrowly adnate and leave a decurrent line on the upper part of the stem. They are close to crowded, white, and up to 5 mm or more broad. The short gills are truncate to rounded truncate to subattenuate.

The stem is 20 - 67 x 10^± mm, white becoming sordid pinkish or pale orangish gray, narrowing upward, slightly flaring at the top. There is a membranous skirt on the upper stem that is striate above, fibrillose below, and bears a thickened edge; it will change color as the stem does when bruised. The stem has a slightly turnip-shaped to ellipsoid to elongate-club-shaped bulbous base. The remains of the volva are in lines of rectangular or dash-like warts around the top of the bulb. Sometimes the warts are hardly noticeable or are absent.

The fruiting bodies have a pleasant, faint to somewhat pungent, flowery to fruit-like odor. The taste is not recorded.

The spores of this species measure (5.9-) 7.0 - 9.2 (-10.5) x (4.2-) 4.5 - 6.0 (-6.5) µm, and are amyloid and mostly ellipsoid, but may also be broadly ellipsoid or elongate. They are white in deposit. Clamps are not found at the bases of basidia.

In the field, this species can be distinguished from the rubescent taxa of the Old and New Worlds because of the orange-pink color of the bruised flesh and the fact that the change of color is largely restricted to the annulus (especially the under side) and material (probably remnants of the inner limb of the volva) on the stipe surface. The eastern North American rubescent taxa (for example, A. rubescens var. alba Coker) also are liable to have larger fruiting bodies.

This species was originally described from New Jersey and South Carolina and now has been found in Illinois. I have seen it only three times in over 20 years, each time from a different locality. Therefore, I consider it rare. It appears in deciduous forest with oaks present and in pine-oak forest. Unfortunately, the pink tint on the annulus and stipe in these photographs does not seem to reproduce well.

The question of where to place this species was perplexing. After discussions with Drs. Bas and Jenkins, there was a consensus to place the species in Amanita section Validae (due to the nonappendiculate cap margin in most specimens and several microscopic characters -- size and shape of spores, cellular subhymenium, etc.). There are some similarities to species in Amanita section Lepidella.
-- R. E. Tulloss

Photos: R. E. Tulloss.

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Last changed 17 Augusta 2004.
This page is maintained by R. E. Tulloss.
Copyright 2003, 2004 by Rodham E. Tulloss.
Photographs copyright 2003 by R. E. Tulloss.