BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The cap is 30 - 100 mm or more wide, white to pallid, convex to flat, with low, broad umbo or slightly depressed disk, dry, sometimes subviscid with age; context soft; margin smooth to slightly sulcate, floccose-appendiculate; universal veil as dense brown to dark brownish gray, low pyramidal warts, fibrillose, adnate, largest over disk (often confluent), becoming smaller (finally only small scales) and more scattered toward margin.

The gills are adnexed, crowded to rather crowded, white, sometimes becoming flesh pinkish, ventricose, up to 9 mm broad, with flocculose edge; the short gills are attenuate.

The stipe is 40 - 140 × 10 - 15 mm [with length including that of bulb], white, subcylindrical, pulverulent-flocculose in upper part to fibrillose-squamulose below; bulb slenderly clavate to slenderly fusiform, up to 30 mm wide; context white, unchanging when cut or bruised, soft, solid; partial veil lacking or sometimes as imperfect ring of slivers near apex; universal veil sometimes present as a few vague scales or warts just above bulb, whitish to gray, fibrillose.

The spores measure (8.5-) 9.5 - 12.5 (-16.1) x (4.8-) 5.1 - 6.5 (-7.8) µm and are ellipsoid to elongate to cylindric and amyloid.  Clamps are absent from the bases of basidia.

The odor and taste are weak or lacking.

The present species occurs in mixed forests including oak and, at least sometimes, pine.  The known range extends from North Carolina and Tennessee to Mississippi and Texas, U.S.A.

Bas created stirps Hesleri containing the present species as its only member.  Since 1969, three taxa have been discovered that seem likely to be assignable to stirps Hesleri: Amanita veldiei D. A. Reid & Eicker nom. inval. (South Africa); A. zangii Zhu L. Yang, T. H. Li & X. L. Wu (China and Japan); and an as yet undescribed species from Honduran forest. -- R. E. Tulloss