BRIEF DESCRIPTION: Permission to quote extensively from his description of this species was granted by Dr. Geoffrey Ridley (1991).

Amanita australis has a cap that is 20 - 90 mm wide and convex to plano-convex, then plano-depressed. Its colors range from very dark honey buff or honey or isabelline in the center to buff at the margin. The cap is viscid when young or wet. The margin of the cap is not striate. The flesh of the cap is largely white with pale isabelline sometimes present below the cap's skin in the cap's center. The volva on the cap is white at first, becoming grayish sepia to isabelline with white to buff tips. The volva is divided into conic or pyramidal warts over the cap's center; these diminish in size and quantity toward the margin.

The gills of this species are free, crowded, white, and 6 - 10 mm wide. Short gills are truncate.

The stem is 37 - 90 x 6 - 26 mm with an abruptly bulbous to subbulbous base 14 - 38 mm wide. The stem is white with its surface above the annulus floccose. Below the annulus white, buff or sordid transverse striate bands are often present. The annulus is membranous, striate above, white to buff, skirt-like at first, and eventually appressed on the stem. The flesh of the hollow stem is white. The volva may be absent from the stipe or form a rim of powdery sordid buff to grayish sepia material on the top of the bulb.

Odor and taste were not reported for this species.

The spores of this species measure (8-) 9 - 12 (-14.5) x (7-) 8 - 10.5 >µm and are globose to subglobose to ellipsoid and amyloid. Clamps are present at bases of basidia (a very odd character for a species of sect. Validae; the species is somewhat reminiscent of the North American A. abrupta Peck of sect. Lepidella).

Amanita australis is found only in New Zealand in association with Nothofagus, Leptospermum, and Kunzea. -- R. E. Tulloss