BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The following is largely drawn from the description of Jenkins (1986).

The cap of A. marginata is 75 - 130 mm wide, convex, white to creamy-white, slightly appendiculate, and having a nonstriate margin.  It appears to the naked eye that the skin of the cap extends well-beyond the ends of the gills and hangs as a short membranous curtain with volval material on its lower edge.  The volva is present as fibrous, adnate, irregularly shaped warts, more or less in an arrangement of concentric rings.

The gills are subcrowded to very crowded, free or connected by a line to the stipe, cream, and fairly broad.  They sometimes are anastomosed. The short gills are numerous, of diverse lengths, and subattenuate to attenuate.

The stem is 70 - 105 x 15 - 21 mm, solid, white, fibrillose-scaly, becoming lacerate-scaly towards the base, with volval remnants as concentric rings of adnate, slightly recurved scales on the upper part of the rather broad, turnip-shaped or fusiform bulb.  The annulus is apical, creamy white, large, pendant, thick, striate above, and floccose below.  However, it is also very loosely structure and may soon fall away.  A considerable about of volval material may appear on the underside at the edge of the anuulus

The spores measure 7.0 - 10.2 x 5.5 - 6.2 µm and are weakly amyloid and ellipsoid to elongate.  Clamps are absent at bases of basidia.

Amanita marginata occurs in mixed decidous and coniferous forests.

Jenkins originally described the species from Tennessee (GSMNP) and later stated it was known from Delaware, New York, and Pennsylvania in addition (Jenkins, 1986).

In the same region, there occurs an undescribed species of section Lepidella with a similarly marginate cap; but this taxon can be separated by its much narrower, very deeply radicating bulb (a cup of coffee to the person who finds the bottom!); much more poorly defined, floccose annulus; more gracile form; and larger spores.