| name | Amanita cokeriana |
| name status | insufficiently known |
| author | Singer |
| english name | "Coker's Slender Caesar" |
| intro | The following is based on Singer's original description (1948). |
| cap | The cap of Amanita cokeriana is 25 - 75 mm wide, nearly white with a straw-colored center, convex, then nearly plane, often with a depressed center at maturity, with a strongly striate margin. The volva is absent or present as scattered flat, thin, white, membranous patches. The flesh is white, soft, not very fragile, and 5 mm thick above the stem. |
| gills | The gills are not crowded, white when young, pale straw-color when mature, up to 8.5 mm broad, distinctly adnexed, with a decurrent line. The short gills are truncate and plentiful. |
| stem | The stem is 70 - 140 × 7 - 12 mm, white, tapering upward, suddenly flaring at the top, nearly smooth to slightly "slivered" below the ring. The ring is placed high on the stem, thin, delicate, white, membranous, not friable, collapsing as a delicate ring 13 - 25 mm below the top of the stem. The saccate volva is deep, membranous, white, not readily collapsing on the stem, and attached to lowest 5 - 10 mm of the stem. The flesh is white(?) and stuffed. |
| spores | Singer's spore measurments are as follows: 11 - 14.5 × 5.5 - 7.5 µm. Coker (1917) supplied a description in small type of a collection from Hartsville, South Carolina dated July 16, 1916 but to which he assigned no number. This description (for which a voucher has not been found) is the basis of Singer's so-called "Coastal plane form" of A. recutita sensu Coker. For this collection, Coker provided the spore measurements: 10.3 - 14.8 × 5.5 - 7.7 µm. |
| discussion |
The Coastal plane form is associated with long leaf pine (Pinus palustrus) in sandy soils. It is sometimes reported that the present species is based on A. recutita sensu Coker (1917). However, this is inaccurate. The material (which receives most of the attention in Coker's description, is represented in Coker's herbarium, and is illustrated by Coker) is explicitly excluded from the present species by Singer. Singer's description of A. cokeriana is based on a description (as noted above) for which no known voucher specimen exists and, in addition, on supplementary material from Florida with a somewhat different cap color. Hence, when a lectotype is selected for A. cokeriana it must be chosen from among Singer's collections made in Florida. In RET's type study of Amanita murrilliana Singer, it was found that the sole paratype was not conformant with the type. The collection in question contained five fruiting bodies at various stages of growth which provided solid information on the range of spore size and shape for whatever entity that paratype represents. Among currently described taxa, the best match is to the present species. RET's spore measurements for the nonconformant paratype follow: (10.8-) 11.5 - 14.7 (-19.0) × (5.5) 6.0 - 7.6 (-8.5) µm. The spores are elongate to cylindric, rarely bacilliform and inamyloid. Clamps are present at bases of basidia. In addition, this material is assignable to stirps Hemibapha as A. cokeriana probably is.—R. E. Tulloss and L. Possiel |
| brief editors | RET |
| name | Amanita cokeriana | ||||||||
| author | Singer. 1948. Sydowia 2: 34. | ||||||||
| name status | insufficiently known | ||||||||
| english name | "Coker's Slender Caesar" | ||||||||
| synonyms |
=Amanita recutita sensu Coker. 1917. J. Elisha Mitchell Scient. Soc. 33(1/2): 26. [p.p.—Singer excludes pl. 13 & 63, and the main description (p. 24) of the "Chapel Hill form," including only the "coastal plane [sic] form."] non Agaricus (Amanita) recutitus Fr. (=Amanita porphyria) The editors of this site owe a great debt to Dr. Cornelis Bas whose famous cigar box files of Amanita nomenclatural information gathered over three or more decades were made available to RET for computerization and make up the lion's share of the nomenclatural information presented on this site. | ||||||||
| etymology |
Coker + -ana, suffix indicating possession; hence, "of Coker" Honoring William Chambers Coker. | ||||||||
| MycoBank nos. | 284051 | ||||||||
| GenBank nos. |
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| lectotypes | requires selection: syntypes are in FH, FLAS | ||||||||
| intro |
The following text may make multiple use of each data field. The field may contain magenta text presenting data from a type study and/or revision of other original material cited in the protolog of the present taxon. Macroscopic descriptions in magenta are a combination of data from the protolog and additional observations made on the exiccata during revision of the cited original material. The same field may also contain black text, which is data from a revision of the present taxon (including non-type material and/or material not cited in the protolog). Paragraphs of black text will be labeled if further subdivision of this text is appropriate. Olive text indicates a specimen that has not been thoroughly examined (for example, for microscopic details) and marks other places in the text where data is missing or uncertain. The following material is derived from the protolog of the present taxon and from original research of R. E. Tulloss. The macroscopic description of this species is said by Singer to be an amended form of Coker's description of the species treated on this site as Amanita recutita sensu Coker; however, Singer rejected the collections on which Coker's concept was based (see "discussion" below and on the brief tab for the present species). Hence, in the present state of our knowledge, we cannot know how much of the macroscopic description is actually based on the collections that could serve as a type for the present taxon. | ||||||||
| pileus | from protolog: 37 - 80 mm wide, off-white, rarely Tilleul Buff or Vinaceous Buff over disc, plano-convex, with center often depressed at maturity, subviscid, subshiny; context white; margin sulcate to subsulcate; universal veil absent or in small fragments. | ||||||||
| lamellae | from protolog: adnexed with decurrent line, subclose to distant, cream, not at all white at maturity, at length stramineous, ventricose, broad or very broad (most having width > one-tenth of pileus diameter); lamellulae not described. | ||||||||
| stipe | from protolog: 62 - 110 × 6 - 10.5 mm, white, narrowing upward, subfibrillose below partial veil, subpruinose above partial veil; context stuffed, then hollow; partial veil superior, attached ca. 16 mm below lamellae, white, smooth or substriate above, well-developed but thin, uniform, persistent, ca. 7 mm from attachment to edge measured radially; universal veil as saccate volva, white, membranous, well-developed but proportionately thin, attached at stipe base, broad or narrow, not at all uniformly persistent. | ||||||||
| odor/taste | from protolog: Odor lacking when fresh, subnauseous in exsiccata. Taste not recorded. | ||||||||
| macrochemical tests |
from protolog: Phenol - on context, slowly browning after 5 min. KOH - on context, minimally pale yellow. | ||||||||
| pileipellis | not described. | ||||||||
| pileus context | not described. | ||||||||
| lamella trama | from protolog: bilateral, inamyloid. | ||||||||
| subhymenium | not described. | ||||||||
| basidia | from protolog: 30 - 43 × 11.7 - 13.5 μm, 4-sterigmate. [Note: Clamps are very probably present.—ed.] | ||||||||
| universal veil | not described. | ||||||||
| stipe context | not described. | ||||||||
| partial veil | not described. | ||||||||
| lamella edge tissue | from protolog: inflated cells of diverse forms, "cheilocystidioid." | ||||||||
| basidiospores | from protolog: [-/-/-] 11 - 14.5 × 5.5 - 7.5 μm, (est. Q = 1.90 - 2.10; est. Q = 1.95), hyaline, inamyloid; apiculus not described; contents not described; white in deposit. [Note: Conservatively estimated Q values are provided in order to produce an approximation of a sporograph.—ed.] | ||||||||
| ecology | So far as is known, no ecological information was supplied for the syntypes. | ||||||||
| material examined |
from protolog: U.S.A.: FLORIDA—Alachua Co. - ca. Gainesville, | ||||||||
| discussion |
RET has placed this species in sect. Caesareae provisionally, but the description might also apply to a species of sect. Amanita. It is necessary to obtain the syntypes for revision. In the protolog of Amanita cokeriana, the author states that he bases his new name on A. recutita sensu Coker (1917). However, he excludes the only specimen of the latter that Coker presents in the main body of his description and illustrates with a photograph (Coker’s “Chapel Hill form”). The excluded specimen Singer says is A. murrilliana. This is not possible because of several characters of A. recutita sensu Coker: It appears that the material Singer chose to include in his A. cokeriana (Coker’s “coastal plane [sic] form”) is considerably more like the probably nonconformant paratype of A. murrilliana. Confusing matters even further, Singer says that the best docmented and preserved collection of A. recutita sensu Coker can be assigned to A. murrilliana, which is manifestly incorrect. At present, it seems as though the A. cokeriana and A. murrilliana must have superficially similar basidiomes, particularly with regard to the pale coloring of the cap outside the disc and the white stipe and partial veil. Indeed, one should be prepared to find that the syntypes of the present species may include more than one taxon—as did the original material of A. murrilliana. While stating that the species is to be found under Pinus palustris in South Carolina, Singer cites no collections from that state. Hence, a lectotype must be selected from among the cited materials collected in Florida for which no ecological information is supplied by Singer. | ||||||||
| citations | —R. E. Tulloss | ||||||||
| editors | RET | ||||||||
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| name | Amanita cokeriana |
| bottom links |
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| name | Amanita cokeriana |
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[ Keys & Checklists ] |
Spore data sets and their composite
Each spore data set is intended to comprise a set of measurements from a single specimen made by a single observer; and explanations prepared for this site talk about specimen-observer pairs associated with each data set. Combining more data into a single data set is non-optimal because it obscures observer differences (which may be valuable for instructional purposes, for example) and may obscure instances in which a single collection inadvertently contains a mixture of taxa.
Text and User-Generated Sporographs are published under the Creative Commons License.
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