BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The cap of Amanita erythrocephala is 10 - 80 mm wide, conico-convex, eventually planar, with a smooth, yellow margin, very shortly striate only in age. The color of the cap varies from red-orange to orange-reddish, most intense in the center. The cap is finely virgate with fine, red, innate fibrils on a yellowish background (requires hand lens). The volval remnants are, if present, scattered, grayish-cream colored flocci; when warts are present initially white or grayish becoming more grayish cream and finally a dirty gray with brownish tone in age. The flesh is generally white but colored like the cap skin, just below the cap skin.

The gills are whitish, tinted yellowish, free, thin. Short gills are present, but not otherwise described.

The stem is approximately 20 - 120 × 3 - 15 mm, smooth, thin, more or less sinuous, subcylindric near the top, narrowing upward, becoming hollow rather rapidly, initially with a orange-yellow area above the ring on an orange background (this layer of color can persist on the whole surface or can be missing in spots, the yellow tint tends to decrease with age), and yellow then yellowish-cream. The basal bulb is submarginate, up to 25 mm wide.  The ring is superior, membranous, fragile, and often can be lost, white in the "button" but it develops an orange yellow tint so the upper part of the stem can take on a silky appearance with broken zones of the original yellow. On the base of the stem, above the bulb, the volva can take the form of a limb-like patch or a very small, fragile plaques. These remains are probably entirely yellowish orange on the outside becoming white on exposure to sunlight, but yellow on the inside, in age, darken like the volva on the cap. In general, the remains of the volva are easily lost.

The odor is weak, the taste is sweet.

The spores measure 6 - 8 (-9) × 5 - 5.6 (-6) µm and are broadly ellipsoid to ellipsoid, infrequently elongate and amyloid. Clamps are absent at bases of basidia.

Originally described from Italy, and still known only from or near the original site, associated with chestnut, pine, and oak.