Amanita afrospinosa

The following description is based on Pegler & Shah-Smith (1997).

The cap is 40 - 120 mm wide, broadly convex, becoming depressed with age, white, with a strongly appendiculate margin. The volva densely covers the cap with erect, easily removed, pyramidal warts. They leave circular scars when they are removed. The cap flesh is thick, white, and unchanging.

The gills are free, crowded, white to buff to yellowish brown, proportionately rather broad. The short gills are truncate and of at least two lengths.

The stem is 65 - 110 × 15 - 30 mm, solid, white, bearing floccose squamules above the ring, scaly below the ring. The basal bulb often cracks and has a short downward tapering base. The ring is thick, floccose, flaring about the middle of the stem, covered with thick, woolly scales or patches. The volva around the top of the bulb forms two or three closely spaced concentric zones of pyramidal scales.

Odor strong, unpleasant, "soapy" to "buttery."

According to the original description (1997, the spores measure 8 - 9 × 4 - 5 µm and are ellipsoid to elongate and amyloid. Spore measurements from recent Arora collections: (6.5-) 7.0 - 9.4 (-11) × (4.8-) 4.9 - 5.6 (-6.4) and are ellipsoid to elongate, infrequently broadly ellipsoid, infrequently cylindric. Clamps are absent from the bases of basidia.

The species was originally described from Zambia and also has been reported from Zimbabwe by David Arora.

Pegler and Shah-Smith suggest that A. afrospinosa could be placed in Bas' stirps Polypyramis. This has not been further investigated.—R. E. Tulloss