BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The cap of Amanita zangii is 50 - 60 mm wide, convex to applanate, white, whitish to cream-coloured. It is covered with adnate, brownish grey, dark grey to blackish, small to rather coarse, subconical (2 - 5 mm wide) to flat verrucose (5 - 10 mm wide), felty to subfibrillose volval remnants. The cap's margin is smooth and appendiculate, and its flesh is white.

The lamellae are free, white, and crowded.

The stipe is 60 - 80 x 8 - 12 mm, subcylindric, annulate; and its surface is whitish to cream-coloured. The bulb is subclavate to subglobose, 15 - 20 mm wide; and its upper part is covered with inconspicuous, whitish to greyish, farinose to floccose, volval remnants. The annulus is apical to subapical, white to whitish, and friable.

The basidiospores measure (7.5-) 8.5 - 11.5 (-12.0) x 6.5 - 8.0 (-9.0) µm, amyloid and ellipsoid, rarely broadly ellipsoid or elongate, colourless, hyaline, and thin-walled.

Amanita zangii is known from tropical China.

It is very similar to A. hesleri Bas, originally described from the United States, and was is assignable to Bas' stirps Hesleri. However, it differs from the latter by its smaller basidiocarps bearing shorter, relatively wider spores and with volval remnants on the pileus having smaller inflated cells. Moreover, A. hesleri tends to have scale-like volval remnants towards the cap margin. -- Zhu L. Yang