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Technical description (t.b.d.)

BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The cap of Amanita pekeoides is 32 - 82 mm wide, convex to plano-convex, then plano-depressed, slightly viscid when wet, quickly drying, with a sulcate margin (17 - 31% of the radius); it is hazel to dark grayish sepia, paling to grayish sepia at margin. The flesh is white, with pale brown vinaceous to pale sepia region below the cap skin in the disc. The volva is absent.

The gills are free, crowded, pale buff to buff when fresh, orangish brown in dried specimens, 6 - 10 mm broad, with an entire pallid edge. The short gills are truncate.

The stem is 70 - 120 x 7 - 10 (-17) mm, pale grayish sepia, decorated with hazel to grayish sepia striate bands, narrowing upward, and exannulate. The flesh is white and hollow. The saccate volva is fleshy when young, membranous in age, buff with ochraceous to fulvous stains, and attached only at stem base.

The spores measure (9.5-) 11.3 - 13.9 (-22.0) x (8.6-) 10.0 - 13.0 (-17.5) µm and are globose to subglobose to broadly ellipsoid (rarely ellipsoid) and inamyloid. Clamps are not observed at bases of basidia.

This species was described from New Zealand (Canterbury, Nelson, and Wellington) and is only known from that country. It is primarily associated with Southern Beech (Nothofagus) and Leptospermum. The name is derived from the Maori peke, meaning a sack or bag.

The most similar taxon currently known is A. humboldtii Singer of Andean Colombia.
-- R. E. Tulloss

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Last changed 16 August 2004.
This page is maintained by R. E. Tulloss.
Copyright 2004 by Rodham E. Tulloss.