| Amanita groenlandica
Bas ex Knudsen & Borgen "Greenland Ringless Amanita"
Technical description not yet available. BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The cap of A.groenlandica is (30-) 50 - 90 (-120) mm wide, hemispheric, expanding to convex and broadly umbonate, finally applanate with or without a low umbo, slightly viscid when young, becoming shiny when dry, with a weakly sulcate margin (10 - 20% or the radius). The cap coloring ranges from pale straw to straw, especially near the margin or when young to grayish yellow, often darkest over disc. The flesh is white, pale brown under the pileipellis, and rather soft. The volva is present as one or a few broad patches or as numerous small flat scale-like patches, whitish to pale grayish brown to gray. The gills are free, white then very pale cream, distally slightly ventricose. Short gills are present. The stem is 40 - 150 x 8 - 20 mm (up to 33 mm at base), narrowing upward rather unmarkedly, ground color whitish with floccose girdles ranging from dirty gray brown to pale brown, becoming darker when buised, exannulate. The volva is fragile and easily disrupted, generally whitish at base and grayish above, with a grayish interior surface paler than the exterior; it dries darker than when fresh, sometimes with a thin outer brown layer. The spores measure (7.8-) 9.2 - 12.5 (-23.0) x (7.8-) 8.2 - 11.5 (-16.0) µm and are inamyloid and globose to subglobose to broadly ellipsoid (rarely ellipsoid). Clamps are not observed from bases of basidia. Amanita groenlandica was originally described from Greenland where it occurs with birch and willows in subarctic habitat. It has now been found from Alaska to Scandinavia and is probably circumpolar in distribution. For comparison, see A. castaneogrisea Contu nom. inval., A. mortenii Knudsen & Borgen, and A. submembranacea (Bon) Gröger (see also the taxa cited on the latter page). -- R. E. Tulloss Photos: TorbjŘrn Borgen (Greenland, image of a paratype on top) Return to Section Vaginatae page. Last changed 25 September
2004. |
