BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The following is based on the original description (2000).

The cap of Amanita microspora is 30 - 50 mm wide, convex, becoming slightly depressed in age, pure white at first, soon pale yellow to ochre over the center, with a broad, white, striate margin. The cap is viscid when moist with  white patches, and the floccose remnants of the volva, unevenly scattered over the center, either easily lost or becoming glued to the surface. The flesh is firm and white.

Gills are free, ventricose, subdistant, white at first, soon becoming pale ochre.  The short gills are infrequent.

The stem is 35 - 60 × 3  - 5 mm, equal, white, dry, with a fine granular surface and light yellowish tinted belts at about its midpoint. with an abrupt ovoid basal bulb. The bulb is up to 15 mm wide at the base. The volva remains on the lower stem and top of the bulb are white squamules. The ring is lacking. The flesh is firm and white.

The spores measure 5 - 7 × 4.5 - 6.7 µm and is subglobose to broadly ellipsoid and inamyloid. Clamps are absent at bases of basidia.

This species occurs on sandy soil in coastal dunes with Coccoloba uvifera. In recent years, a growing number of Amanita species have been collected in association with Coccoloba: Amanita dunicola Guzmán and A. arenicola O. K. Mill & D. J. Lodge.  Additional, probably undescribed taxa seemingly associated with Coccoloba are currently being revised from countries in or around the Caribbean.  The present species was originally described from Puerto Rico. -- R. E. Tulloss and L. Possiel

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Last changed 10 October 2009.
This page is maintained by R. E. Tulloss.
Copyright 2006, 2009 by Rodham E. Tulloss.