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[ Keys & Checklist/Picturebooks ] "Wood's Lemon-Pinecone Amanita" :: Technical description (t.b.d.) BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The following is largely based on the original description (Wood, 1997). The cap of Amanita strobilaceoides is up to 60 mm wide, rounded convex to plano-convex, smooth, dry, pallid cream to bright chrome yellow, with a nonstriate margin. Volval remains are present as flat scales, vary slightly in thickness, pallid buff to bright lemon yellow. The gills are free, crowded, thin, white to pale cream, with a concolorous edge. The short gills are present in at least two series. The stem is up to 60 × 15 mm, white, and smooth or with yellow scales or fragments, with a small subglobose bulb. The ring is large, flared, membranous, persistent, skirt-like, striate above, pale cream to pale yellow or pale apricot, with a margin slightly more saturated in color. A volva may be absent, but is sometimes present as a yellowish to white ridge on the upper bulb. >The spores measure 7.2 - 10.2 × (4.8-) 5.1 - 7.5 (-8.1) µm and are broadly ellipsoid to ellipsoid and strongly amyloid. Clamps are absent at bases of basidia. Wood describes the mushroom as occurring in sclerophyll forests from the state of New South Wales, Australia. A sclerophyll forest in the Australian bush is a forest of hard-leaved plants including Eucalyptus in the overstory (wikipedia). Wood was uncertain whether the two collections he examined represented the same species. He states he had some reservation about considering this species as similar to such as A. bulbosa var. citrina (Schaeff.) Gillet and A. brunnescens G. F. Atk. although he places it taxonomically with them. The bulb of the present species is neither abrupt nor marginate. The volva material is much more similar to that of typical species of section Validae such as A. flavoconia G. F. Atk. (the Americas), A. flavipes S. Imai (eastern, southeastern, southern Asia), and A. flavella E.-J. Gilbert & Cleland (Australia). Just as Wood has concern over how many species he was dealing with and whether other authors have all consistently interpreted this Australian species, it should be noted that the notebooks of A. H. Smith (University of Michigan) show that he considered splitting A. flavoconia into a number of varieties. At present, a central and south American variety of A. flavoconia is recognized (var. inquinata Tulloss, Ovrebo & Halling). Moreover, L. F. Zhang, J. B Yang and Zhu L. Yang (2004) recently published molecular evidence that A. flavipes comprises a number of genetic clades that have macroscopic differences such as pigmentation as well as differences first detected on the molecular level. As Wood says, further revision of his and other Australian material similar to A. strobilaceoides should be carried out. -- R. E. Tulloss and L. Possiel
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