Technical description (t.b.d.)

BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The cap of A. dunicola is 15 - 40 mm wide, convex to subcampanulate or nearly plane, subviscid, with a smooth to short sulcate-striate margin; it is pale brownish to leather brown. The flesh is white. The volva is white, irregular, arranged in medium to small patches or warts over the center of the cap, and without much sand on the upper surface.

The gills are free to narrowly adnate, whitish rose to rose brown, drying yellow-brown to orange-brown, with a white fimbriate edge. Short gills are present and subtruncate to truncate.

The stem is 30 - 80 x 3 - 7 mm, cylindric to somewhat narrowing downward, smooth appearing, minutely flocculose, exannulate; the flesh is white. The membranous saccate volva is white, delicate, often encrusted with sand, more or less retained at maturity.

The spores measure (8.5-) 10.0 - 13.9 (-15.0) x (6.0-) 7.2 - 9.5 (-11.2) µm and are inamyloid and broadly ellipsoid to ellipsoid (occasionally elongate). Clamps are not uncommon at bases of basidia.

Amanita dunicola was originally described from the state of Yucatán, Mexico. It is associated with Coccoloba uvifera at the type locality and may be found in sandy areas with Coccoloba throughout the Caribbean region.

Amanita dunicola bears similarities to a small group of tropical amanitas of section Vaginatae that have an upper layer to the cap's pellis which is in the form of a gelatinous matrix through which pass (apparently ungelatinized) pigmented hyphae. Other taxa in this group include A. crebresulcata Bas (of Amazonian Brazil), A. flammeola Pegler & Piearce (of central Africa) and A. sampajensis A. V. Sathe & S. M. Kulk. (of southwestern India). -- R. E. Tulloss

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Last changed 15 August 2004.
This page is maintained by R. E. Tulloss.
Copyright 2004 by Rodham E. Tulloss.