BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The cap of A. subcaligata is 50 - 110 mm wide, smooth and salmon-buff at first, soon areolate, conico-convex to convex to nearly plane, and occasionally with a slight umbo or with a slightly depressed center.  The margin is nonstriate and slightly appendiculate.  The volva covers the entire cap at first and is connected directly to the cap flesh -- with no cap skin in between.   As the cap expands the volval layer breaks up into subpyramidal regions about 1 - 5 mm wide and exposing tissue that may be more volva or cap flesh ranging in color from white to seashell pink to pale buff to buff (after some drying). Unexposed flesh is white when cut.  As time passes, volval warts become pinkish brown to cinnamon-rufus to hazel with highest points darkest.  The volval material is more fibrillose and appressed toward the cap margin.

The gills are narrowly adnate to free, sometimes seceding and leaving striations on the stem's apical region, subdistant to crowded, cream in mass, in side view pale cream to off-white to white with a faintly yellowish and "waxy" tinge; they are 6 - 18 mm broad.  When the gills fork (not often seen), this happens close to the stem.  Short gills are truncate to subtruncate to attenuate, unevenly distributed, of diverse lengths, and plentiful.

The stem is about 60 - 127 x 8 - 20 mm, white to off-white, becoming pale brown from handling, cylindric or narrowing downward, occasionally slightly expanded at the base, sometimes slightly dog-legged, and occasionally with a rounded point at the very bottom.  The stem does not flare at the apex; it is glabrous to subfibrillose and very finely longitudinally striate above the annulus.  The context is white and unchanging or faintly buff in the base and sometimes tan near stained surface regions.  The stem bears an annulus that is superior, pendant, membranous, rather narrow, bearing a thickened edge, and cream at first, but then taking on a pale brown tint.  The lower surface of the annulus is cottony-floccose.  The thickest scales on the bottom of the annulus become brown on the tips as the volva does on the cap.  The annulus eventually tears and collapses and may be lost.  The volva is distributed from just below the annulus nearly to the stem base in roughly concentric scales or (especially lower on the stem and within the ground) as nearly complete rings (suggesting the volva at the top of the bulb in A. muscaria (L. : Fr.) Lam.).  Some rings may be at a pronounced angle to the level of the ground.  The volval remnants are pallid to yellowish brown to rusty orange (a very striking color that I have seen on one specimen of the present species in Colorado) to brown on the exterior, but white within.

The spores measure (8.5-) 9.3 - 13.0 (-17.7) x (6.2-) 6.5 - 10.2 (-11.5) >µm and are amyloid and broadly ellipsoid to ellipsoid.  The spore print is white.  Clamps are plentiful and rather large at bases of basidia.

The odor is indistinct at first, but may become foetid or "like dog urine."  The taste is indistinct.  Since some taxa of subsection Vittadiniae are POISONOUS, eating A. subcaligata is not recommended.

Amanita subcaligata was described originally in Armillaria from "under shrubs" from the state of California, U.S.A.  Under the synonym, A. salmonea, this species was described from fairy rings in lawns in Texas.  The species is also known from high altitude prairie and grazing land in Colorado.  In Texas, it sometimes is found intermixed with A. silvifuga Bas.  Reports of A. subcaligata from Europe have proven to be false.  Recent placement of the species in Floccularia was also incorrect.  It is without doubt an Amanita.

Bas (1969) placed A. subcaligata (as "A. salmonea") in his stirps Vittadinii, in which he noted that the present species was most similar to A. ameghinoi (Speg.) Singer, known only rom Argentina. -- R. E. Tulloss