| name | Amanita elongatispora |
| name status | nomen acceptum |
| author | A. E. Wood [Epithet Spelling Corrected] |
| english name | "Wood's Elongate-Spored Lepidella" |
| intro |
The following is largely based on the original description (Wood 1997). |
| cap |
The cap of Amanita elongatispora is up to 60 mm wide, convex then flattened convex, smooth, appearing slightly silky, dry, pale gray-brown to gray-brown, with a nonstriate margin [possibly appendiculate?]. Volval remains are present as scattered, submembranous warts, flat, pale gray to buff-gray. |
| gills |
The gills are free, moderately thick, crowded, cream, with a concolorous margin. The short gills are present in at least two series. |
| stem |
The stem is up to 110 × 13 mm, white to cream, smooth to slightly fibrillose, narrowing downward toward the bulb, with a narrowly radicating, spindle-shaped bulb. The ring is submembranous, cream, somewhat persistent or fragile. [The ring is so small it is barely noticeable in Wood's illustration.] The bulb is white to cream and has, on its upper part, a series of fibrillar zones that may be missing in some specimens. |
| spores |
The spores measure 9.0 - 11.1 × 4.4 - 5.8 µm and are elongate to cylindric and amyloid. Clamps are scattered and often small at bases of basidia. [Note: Wood's unusual use of Bas' terms for spore shape is particularly noticeable with regard to this species. If the average ratio of length to width of a spore is 1.98 then surely nearly half the spores must have had a length-to-width ratio of 2 or greater, hence calling the spores "elongate" significantly misrepresents the spore shape by omitting the fact that nearly half the spores are cylindric. Readers of Wood's (1997) work on Australian Amanitas should be aware that he is apparently only presenting average values of Q where most researchers of amanitas provide raw data (for example, a range of values of Q) as well.] |
| discussion |
Wood described this species from New South Wales, Australia, as occurring in "moist hardwood forests" and Angophora costata woodland. The genus Angophora (Myrtle family) is a close relative of Eucalyptus and is often included under the informal term "eucalypt" (wikipedia). Wood places the present species in section Validae although he gives no reason for it. Species of section Validae almost always, so far as is known, have a subhymenium (cells which support the basidia) comprised of inflated cells, comparatively short basidia, the presence of a membranous and persistent ring on the stem, and none of the species that have been assigned to section Validae previous to Wood's work have clamps on the basidial bases. Therefore the present taxon seems most appropriately placed in section Lepidella. The fact that Wood considers A. griseoconia D. A. Reid (another species Wood places in section Validae instead of section Lepidella) as a very similar species supports the above view. Within section Lepidella and considering Bas' (1969) key to his stirpes of subsection Solitariae, the closest match for the present species is with stirps Chlorinosma—a group that currently contains taxa from the Americas and central Africa. Since in Wood's (1997) order of presentation A. elongatispora is the first species assigned to section Validae, this may be an appropriate page at which tor raise the concern that his phrase "subhymenial cells" (which he differentiates from cells directly supporting a basidium) is not used as I am used to seeing it used by other authors dealing with species of Amanita. He appears to be discussing not the tissue of similar cells that either directly support a basidium or are adjacent to such cells but to the various elements of the divergent structure between the subhymenium and the central group of cells that run from the cap flesh to the gill edge in an Amanita gill. If this is the case, then we can have no certainty in comparing descriptions of the gill tissue in Amanita species by others to the descriptions of Wood. The unusual usage of "subhymenium" is particularly evident in Wood's description of Amanita flavella (1997: 815) in which he describes basidia arising from "strongly inflated" cells and then says that the subhymenium includes "hyphae" that are "somewhat inflated." Confusing use of terms is one of the factors that contribute to Wood's descriptions being difficult to interpret and use.—R. E. Tulloss and L. Possiel |
| brief editors | RET |
| name | Amanita elongatispora | ||||||||
| author | ("elongataspora") A. E. Wood. 1997. Austral. Syst. Bot. 10: 808, fig. 44(a-e).. | ||||||||
| name status | nomen acceptum | ||||||||
| english name | "Wood's Elongate-Spored Lepidella" | ||||||||
| MycoBank nos. | 443201 | ||||||||
| GenBank nos. |
Due to delays in data processing at GenBank, some accession numbers may lead to unreleased (pending) pages.
These pages will eventually be made live, so try again later.
| ||||||||
| holotypes | UNSW | ||||||||
| 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 based entirely on the protolog of this species, which does not meet contemporary standards for Amanita taxonomy. | ||||||||
| basidiospores |
from the protolog: [-/-/-] 9.0 - 11.1 × 4.4 - 5.8 μm, (Q = 1.95 - 1.98), amyloid, elongate. [Note: Data provided is not sufficient to permit generation of a sporograph.—ed.] | ||||||||
| ecology | In moist, hardwood forest. | ||||||||
| material examined | from the protolog: AUSTRALIA: NEW SOUTH WALES—Murwillumbah, Mooball St. For., 17.iii.1983 J. J. Bruhl s.n. (holotype, UNSW 83/219). | ||||||||
| citations | —R. E. Tulloss | ||||||||
| editors | RET | ||||||||
Information to support the viewer in reading the content of "technical" tabs can be found here.
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.
In the case of a taxon page, image credits are on the 'image' tab.