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[ Keys & Checklist/Picturebooks ] "Miller's Lonesome Lepidella"
Technical description (t.b.d.) BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The following is based on the original description of Miller (1992). The cap of Amanita albifimbriata is 65 - 80 mm wide, broadly convex to planar, sometimes slightly depressed in the center with age, ivory white, glistening, moist but not viscid, with a nonstriate and appendiculate margin. The volval remnants are present as easily removed, superficial, detersile, white warts clustered over the center, more scattered toward the margin. The margin extends over [?beyond the ends of?] the gills. The flesh is firm and white. The gills are nearly free, close, pure white to cream color in age; the short gills are present in two tiers. The stem is 75 - 85 × 7 - 17 mm, cylindric or slightly expanded at the top, with scattered, white, sticky fibrillose material below the ring. The basal bulb is napiform, appearing vertically compressed, marginate to obscurely marginate, 18 - 25 × 26 - 32 mm, with a [downward-]tapering blunt base. The flesh is firm and white. The volva is present as a thin, white membrane, with a free margin. Odor of old hambones or old tennis shoes, notably in all stages of development. The spores measure 7.6 - 10.5 × (5.4-) 6.3 - 7.6 (-8) µm and are subglobose to broadly ellipsoid to ellipsoid and amyloid. Clamps are absent at bases of basidia. Originally described from the state of Western Australia, often in association with Eucalyptus and with Xanthorroea in the under story. As Miller indicates, placement of A. albifimbriata within section Lepidella is not resolved using the key of Bas (1969). The combination of distinct warts on the pileus with distinctive membranous volval remains on the stipe bulb makes the entity difficult to place. The spores are simply too small and too round to fit in Bas' stirps Preissii and pointed warts on the cap are also unknown in that stirps. On the other hand, a distinctly membranous, limbate volva combined with a clampless basidia does not really find a home other than stirps Preissii. We're left with the choice of leaving the species unclassified in Bas' system, creating a new stirps in which to place it, or placing it in stirps Pressii, which Bas already considered heterogeneous. The first choice seems most appropriate at this time. -- R. E. Tulloss
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[ Keys & Checklist/Picturebooks ] Last changed 9 August 2008. |