|
[ Section Caesareae page. ]
[ Amanita Studies ]
[ Keys & Checklist/Picturebooks ] "Pine Cone Volva False Caesar" =Amanitopsis fibrilosa Beeli :: Technical description (t.b.d.) BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The following description is based on Beeli (1935). The cap of Amanita strobilaceovolvata is 60 - 120 mm wide, fleshy, conic-convex, umbonate (Gilbert 1941 says the umbo is small but prominent), glabrous, fuliginous; on a yellow background, dry, with a striate margin. The cap skin can be pealed. The volva is absent. The flesh is firm, white, yellowish below the cap skin. Gills are free, somewhat pointed at the two ends, crowded, yellowish-white, 4 mm broad, thin, and fragile; there are two short gills for every seven gills. Its stem is 120 - 220 × 7 - 10 mm, cylindric, stuffed, fibrillose, smooth or sub-smooth, easily separated from cap, and white becoming yellowish. The ring is membranous, white, superior, skirt-like, and fragile. The volva is saccate, pinkish white, scaly-varicose on the exterior giving the appearance of a pinecone. The volva sac is connected only at the stem's very base as depicted in Madame Goossens' watercolor. The flesh interior of the volva is brownish (Madame Goossens' watercolor as reproduced in Beeli (1935) has a pinkish tint on the interior of the volva). The flesh is firm and white. Odor is absent and the taste is slightly acrid. The spores measure 6 µm in diameter and are globose and inamyloid, Beeli's reported measurements are notoriously inaccurate. Measurements from Gilbert's spore drawings (1941) are 9.3 - 11.3 × 8.1 - 9.5 (-9.9) µm; and the spores are subglobose to broadly ellipsoid. The present species was originally described from the Republic of Congo occurring singly in dry forest. Gilbert (1941) makes the case that Amanitopsis fibrilosa Beeli was based upon an old specimen of Amanita strobilaceovolvata. A number of African species are described as having a decorated exterior to the volva usually surface cracking producing darkened areola, for example, Amanita zambiana Pegler and Piearce. Zhu L. Yang has described species of section Amanita with decorated volva from Yunnan Province, China. The most similar among these is A. verrucosivolva Zhu L. Yang (1997). This species does have yellow tints on the cap but differs in lacking the dark shades of color and is in fact orange to orange-yellow over the center. The spores are larger; the stipe lacks a ring; the volva sac (in Yang's excellent drawings) is shown connected to the sides of the stipe at least for ten millimeters or so; and the volva is only darkened on the tips of the warts. The two species, despite the fact that one stipe bears a ring and the other does not, do seem to have many characters in common -- another case where further work is needed to understand the appropriate role of the stipe ring in Amanita taxonomy. -- R. E. Tulloss
[ Section Caesareae page. ]
[ Amanita Studies ]
[ Keys & Checklist/Picturebooks ] Last changed 23 March 2009. |