Amanita pyramidiferina

The following is largely based on the original description (Wood 1997).

The cap of Amanita pyramidiferina is up to 70 mm wide, off-white to drab cream or warm pale cream-buff, flattened convex then plane, smooth, dry or vaguely viscid, with a nonstriate and slightly appendiculate margin.  Volval remains are fairly small conical warts, white to off-white, or rarely somewhat buff, often tending to disappear.

The gills are free, crowded, thin, white or slightly cream, with a concolorous edge.  The short gills are present in at least one series.

The spores measure (7.2-) 10.5 - 12.6 × (5.1-) 6.9 - 9.0 µm and are ellipsoid to elongate and amyloid.  Clamps are present at bases of basidia, sometimes more easily seen in other tissues than at bases of basidia.

Wood describes the mushroom as occurring in sclerophyll forests from the state of New South Wales, Australia.  A sclerophyll forest in the Australian bush is a forest of hard-leaved plants including Eucalyptus in the overstory (wikipedia).

Wood assigns this species to stirps Ravenelii but his description of the volval remnants on the cap contradict this.  The volva in the cap warts, which is extremely important in Bas' systematics, should have plentiful filamentous hyphae as well as having a wart base that is entirely dominated by hyphae.  Wood states that the pyramidal warts are dominated by inflated cells.  The description includes no mention of the hyphae dominated base of the warts.  Although spores in stirps Virginea are generally smaller than in A. pyramidiferina, the present species fulfills other requirements of belonging there.

The similarity on this point leads us to explore the reasons Wood gives for segregating the two "pyramid building" species.  A review of the two original descriptions show that many of the distinctions given do not hold up.  The remaining distinctions are as follows:  Amanita pyramidiferina may have fewer clamp connections at bases of basidia and is reported to have a far more persistent annulus and a far broader, and more distinct, bulb at the stipe base.  Considering that the age of a fruiting body can influence the ability to detect clamps at the bases of basidia and that weather conditions may influence such things as the persistence of a ring and the breadth of a bulb, we would hope that someone would take the time to revise the two species in question.—R. E. Tulloss and L. Possiel

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