BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The cap of A. cokeri is 80 - 150 mm wide, at first hemispherical, later convex to plano-convex, white to ivory, shiny, viscid when wet, appendiculate, with a nonsulcate margin.  The flesh is white, unchanging, and firm. The volva is present as rather large, adnate to detersile, white to brownish, pyramidal warts over the center.  The warts decrease in size and pass gradually into a fine flocculence towards the margin, and they are easily removed by rain.  The base of the warts are minutely, radially fibrillose.

The gills are crowded, free to narrowly adnate, broad to very broad, white with a slight yellowish or pinkish tinge, with a white, subflocculose edge.  The short gills are subtruncate to attenuate.

The stem is 100 - 200 x 12 - 20 mm, equal or tapering upward, solid to stuffed, white, silky, and annulate.  The annulus can be double (as in A. solitaria (Bull. : Fr.) Fr.) as can be seen to greater or lesser degree in the illustrations, above.  Conspicuous, white to brownish, pyramidal warts or recurved scales are often arranged in circles at the base of the stem and on the top of the bulb.

The spores measure (9.2-) 10.8 - 13.2 (-15.0) x (5.5-) 6.5 - 8.7 (-9.5) µm and are amyloid and ellipsoid to elongate.  Clamps are not rare at bases of basidia.

Amanita cokeri is a species of oak-pine forests in the eastern USA.  It is usually odorless when young and even until maturity, although an odor in the "decaying protein" group becomes strong later in some fruiting bodies.  An undescribed taxon with a tendency to pink or reddish staining and an odor somewhat like a mix of cedar wood and burnt sugar (by RET's nose) can be confused with A. cokeri.  The center of distribution of the latter taxon is apparently more northerly (common in the New Jersey Pine Barrens where A. cokeri is relatively rare).  Amanita cokeri is one of the North American taxa that has been incorrectly referred to the European A. solitaria.

The species called "A. cokeri" by California authors is a very different taxon.  Among other differences, the western taxon lacks the distinctive annulus, bulb, and recurved scales on the bulb seen in the eastern species.

For comparison to taxa most closely related to A. cokeri, see A. eijii Zhu L. Yang, A. japonica Hongo ex Bas, A. solitaria, and A. timida Corner & Bas. These taxa are members of Bas' stirps Solitaria. -- R. E. Tulloss