Technical description (t.b.d.)

BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The cap of A. toxica is 50  - 80 mm wide, yellowish-cream and beige over the center, hemispheric at first, becoming planar, eventually depressed, viscid when moist, with a striate margin, inflexed at first, later curved upward and undulant. The flesh is very firm, ochre to old ivory near the cap skin, elsewhere white. The volva is present as white scales, most common over the center.

The gills are free, crowded, whitish, straight, oblong-subventricose, with edge that is  fimbriate to cottony. Short gills are present.

The stem is 50 - 150 × 7 - 22 (-30) mm, yellowish white, pruinose to squamulose, finely groovedy longitudinally. The bulb is proportionately rather large in young material, bearing many fine hyphal filaments on its bottom. The flesh is white and ranges from solid to hollow. The ring is membranous, white, hangs like a skirt, and is very fragile. The volva is present as a ring of small warts around the base of the stem just above the bulb or as a free limb. The volva is white.

The odor is described as like potato peelings. The taste is described as insipid. Lazo says that it is deadly poison. It has reported that an ouabain-like compound is found in this species and it has been proposed as the cause of death from ingestion of A. toxica. 

The spores measure (8.0-) 8.5 - 11.6 (13.5) × (6.6-) 7.0 - 9.5 (-10.0) µm and subglobose to broadly ellipsoid, infrequently ellipsoid and are inamyloid. Clamps are present at bases of basidia.

A. toxica is present as solitary or rarely in small groups in association with plantations of Monterrey Pine, presumably with Nothofagus. It is known from Chile. 

Lazo and others originally treated this species in Amanita gemmata (Fr.) Bertillon in Dechambre. However, this is not possible because A. gemmata lacks clamps at bases of basidia or has very few of them. Also, A. gemmata has dominantly ellipsoid spores. Moreover, no other species assigned to section Amanita is known to be deadly poisonous except for cases of ingestion of large quantities of material. 
-- R. E. Tulloss and E. Horak

Photo: R. E. Tulloss (dried material, Chile)

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Last change 1 June 2006
This page is maintained by R. E. Tulloss.
Copyright 2006 by Rodham E. Tulloss.
Photo copyright 2006 by R. E. Tulloss.