BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The description is not based on recent material. It is based on the original description by Wang (1973). A modern description of this taxon can be found in the work of Zhu-L. Yang (1997) where it is treated as A. sychnopyramis f. subannulata Hongo. The two names are taxonomic synonyms.

The cap of Amanita kwangsiensis is 30 - 95 mm wide, dresden brown, mummy-brown in center, at first hemispheric, then convex, with a nonappendiculate, markedly striate margin (about 20% of the radius), often splitting, somewhat incurved at first, then remaining downwardly curved. The flesh is white. The volva is present as pyramidal warts, white to grayish-white, plentiful, and at first rather evenly distributed.

Gills are free, close to crowded, white.  Short gills are present.

The stem is 30 - 110 × 10 - 17 mm, white, becoming sordid yellow, and narrowing upward. The bulb is narrowly subfusiform to subclavate to subnapiform, with a blunt point below. The flesh is white, solid (hollow in dried material of the type), and fleshy. The ring is placed near or below the middle of the stem, membranous, thin, narrow, skirt-like, rather rapidly lost, white and striate above, grayish-white below, with dark and dash-like fragments of volva decorating the margin. The volva is missing from the bulb or present in 4 - 5 inconspicuous circles of fine fragments.

The spores from the type specimen measure (5.5-) 6.0 - 7.8 (-9.0) × (5.2-) 5.5 - 7.0 (-7.2) µm and is globose to subglobose to broadly ellipsoid, infrequently ellipsoid and inamyloid. Clamps were not observed at bases of basidia. Yang provided spore measurements from Southern China, which measured (6.0-) 6.5 - 8.5 (-9.5) × 6.9 - 8.0 (-9.0) µm. Yang's measurements include the type specimen as well as fourteen other specimens.

Amanita kwangsiensis should be considered POISONOUS. Wang describes tests in which mice were injected with a water solution of an alcohol extract of dried material. Within fifteen minutes, all six mice became paralyzed for a period of twelve hours. Afterwards, five recovered and one died. Yang also reports this species as poisonous to flies.

This species was originally described from Quangxi Province (China) where it was reported as gregarious under pine. Hongo's description of forma subannulata was made based on Japanese material. In Southwest China this species grows with Castanopsis and Lithocarpus (Yang, 1997). -- R. E. Tulloss and L. Possiel