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[ Keys & Checklist/Picturebooks ] "Miller's Slender Amanita"
Technical description (t.b.d.) BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The following is based on the original description of Miller (1992). The cap of Amanita brunneibulbosa is 38 - 44 (-50) mm wide, conic to convex then planar in age, viscid, glabrous, brown, with a nonstriate margin, sometimes appendiculate in young material. Volval remnants are present as light gray, powdery remains of the volva, which are present at the margin in young material or as loose, white, easily removed patches over the center and (at times) irregularly over the surface. The flesh is white, firm, and unchanging. The gills are subdistant, narrowly adnate, broad, white, sometimes becoming buff in age. The short gills are present in a single tier. The stem is 75 - 110 × 4 - 7 mm, cylindric white covered with minute fibrils, tinted cream to buff. The basal bulb is subglobose, marginate to submarginate, 13 - 23 × 13 - 20 mm. The volva is white and submembranous and is visible as rings of tissue on the base, tinted cream to buff. The ring is dull white to grayish white, very fragile, sometimes present as a ragged skirt, sometimes absent. The flesh is white, firm, and unchanging. The spores measure 8 - 10 × 5 - 6.5 µm and are ellipsoid to elongate and amyloid. Clamps are absent at bases of basidia. Originally described from the state of Western Australia where it occurs gregariously in litter under Eucalyptus. Miller proposed placement of A. brunneibulbosa in section Phalloideae. On the other hand, Miller states the most similar species is A. gossypino-annulata D. A. Reid, which is rather securely placed in section Lepidella. The original description is not clear about the nature of the volva in relation to the stem's bulb. In the accompanying photograph, the volva appears to be present on the lower stem as loose, appressed patches, not as a membranous limb. The pileus pigmentation appears virgate in the photograph and an annulus is present although possibly damaged in every specimen in the photograph, thus suggesting the fragility has more to do with its thinness than with a microscopic structure that might argue for placement in section Lepidella. A submembranous, white volva that becomes tinted buff or gray is known in a number of species of section Validae. The small, but elongate spores are also consistent with placement in section Validae. Therefore, at least for the moment, I propose the placement of this species in the latter section. -- R. E. Tulloss
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