[ Section Lepidella page. ]  [ Amanita Studies home. ]  [ Keys & Checklist/Picturebooks ]
[ Great Smoky Mtns. N.P. & region list ]
[ New Jersey & region list ]

Amanita cinereopannosa Bas
"Gray Rags Lepidella"

Amanita cinereopannosa Bas -- WV A. cinereopannosa Bas -- NC

A. cinereopannosa Bas -- NC


Technical description (t.b.d.)

BRIEF DESCRIPTION: Amanita cinereopannosa has a white or whitish pileus (sometimes with a silvery sheen), is 70 - 150 mm wide with an appendiculate margin (not always so dramatic as in the accompanying photo), is not striate at the margin, and is decorated over the center part by brownish gray subpyramidal warts that, under a hand lens, appear to be like mudpies with the fingerprints of children on them (photo, below left).  The remnants are more flat and patch-like closer to the margin.

Amanita cinereopannosa Bas - warts on cap of young specimen -- VT The stipe is 100 - 160 x 15 - 20 mm, has an apical, white, easily broken annulus that is striate on the upper surface and sticks to fingers easily.  At the stipe base is a radicating bulb
Amanita cinereopannosa Bas - young specimen with rectangular scales on bulb -- VT up to 65 x 35 mm.  At the top of the bulb, there are sometimes several rows of rectangular scales (see photo, lower right).  The bulb may have volval warts distributed over it that are similar to the warts on the pileus; or volval warts may be absent from the bulb.

The gills are free, crowded, more cream-colored (in side view) than the pileus.  The short gills are subtruncate to attenuate.

When fresh, the odor is of fresh dough; sometimes the odor becomes more like "chlorine" in age.

The spores measure (8.0-) 8.8 - 12.0 (-14.1) � (4.9-) 5.2 - 7.0 (-8.3) �m and are ellipsoid to elongate (very infrequently cylindric) and amyloid.  Clamps are not present at the bases of basidia.

Amanita cinereopannosa has a range extending through the eastern U.S. from New England down through the Appalachian Mountains at least as far as the Carolinas.  It occurs in mixed forests including oak (Quercus) in the northeastern U.S.A.

Bas placed the present species in his stirps Strobiliformis (see A. strobiliformis (Paul. ex Vitt.) Bertillon in Dechambre.  As far as field identification goes, the reader should review and compare A. cinereoconia G. F. Atk., A. onusta (Howe) Sacc., and A. tephrea Bas nom. prov. -- R. E. Tulloss

Photos: ; R. E. Tulloss (top left, West Virginia; others in body of text, Vermont); L. R. Hesler (middle line, Tennessee, with permission of Dr. R. H. Petersen, Curator, L. R. Hesler Herbarium, Univ. of Tenn., Knoxville); Dr. Clark L. Ovrebo (top right and bottom line,GSMNP, North Carolina).

[ Section Lepidella page. ]  [ Amanita Studies home. ]  [ Keys & Checklist/Picturebooks ]
[ Great Smoky Mtns. N.P. & region list ]
[ New Jersey & region list ]


Last changed 1 April 2009.
This page is maintained by R. E. Tulloss.
Copyright 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009 by Rodham E. Tulloss.
Photographs copyright 2000 by Rodham E. Tulloss.
Photographs copyright 2006 by Clark L. Ovrebo.