BRIEF DESCRIPTION: This description is based on an unpublished study of the Amanita prairiicola by the author of this page.

The cap of A. prairiicola is 19 - 110 mm wide, convex at first then plano-convex, white at first between volval patches, then more or less tinged with yellow or faintly brownish cream throughout, appedendiculate, with a nonstriate margin, at first incurved, then decurved with age. The volva is present as flat, thin warts or small patches, whitish to pale off-white to tan to brownish, and roughly polygonal.

The gills are free to narrowly adnate, subdistant to crowded, and pale pinkish cream to slightly yellowish cream in mass. The short gills are truncate to rounded truncate to subattenuate to attenuate, unevenly distributed, of diverse lengths, and plentiful.

The stem is 40 - 80 x 4 - 25 mm, cylindric or subcylindric or slightly narrowing upward or downward, and white or whitish. There is a persistent, similarly colored annulus with a thickened edge. The volva is usually absent or very scant as scattered small concolorous to faintly sordid polygonal warts below the annulus. The stipe base is not bulbous and can be slightly "rooting."

The spores measure (8.0-) 10.0 - 14.0 (-19.2) x (5.2-) 6.4 - 10.0 (-12.2) µm and are amyloid and broadly ellipsoid to ellipsoid to elongate. Clamps are common and prominent at bases of basidia.

This species occurs naturally in the central USA with a range from the state of Arizona to eastern Oregon and eastward to Kansas, from which it was first described. One specimen has been found in a planted area in Argentina. It may have been imported with soil.

Amanita prairiicola is a species of tall grass prairie and high elevation desert. It is frequently found with no nearby woody plant symbiont. It has been found in desert with no living plant in its vicinity.

Bas placed A. prairiicola in his stirps Vittadinii. -- R. E. Tulloss