BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The cap of A. xerocybe is 20 - 67 mm wide, from conico-convex with a broadly rounded apex to convex and soon flattened around a low, obtuse umbo, with a widely sulcate-striate margin (25 - 65% of the radius).  The cap is at first sordid whitish to cream, later becoming ochraceous, and at the center, brownish ochraceous yellow to ochraceous brown.  The volva is present as cottony-fluffy to powdery-granular substance gilvous to dark red-brown to fairly dark orange-reddish brown patches that covers the entire cap -- especially densely over the center.  The volva is not easily separated from the cap because the connecting hyphae do not readily gelatinize -- hence, the Latin and English names of this species.

The gills are distant, free, somewhat intervenose, broad, whitish but soon becoming cream (particularly on drying).  Short gills are very scarce, truncate, sometimes partly adnate to long gills.

The stem is up to 90 x 6 mm, annulate, narrowly stuffed, and gilvous to ochraceous tan.  The flesh is creamy to white and unchanging when cut or bruised.  The annulus is very fragile and often missing.  Volval remnants form a narrow fragmented ring or rings around the upper part of the stem's basal bulb.

The spores measure 7.8 - 9.1 (-9.7) x 7.6 - 9.1 (-9.5) µm according to Bas (1978) and 6.0 - 9.0 x 6.0 - 8.6 (-9.4) according to Simmons et al. (2001) and are inamyloid and globose to subglobose.  Clamps are absent at bases of basidia.

This species is known from Amazonian Brazil and the Pakaraima Mountains of western Guyana.  The latter localities include riverine swamp forest and adjacent slope forest dominated by Palywayek (Dicymbe corymbosa) and other mixed hardwoods.

For comparison, see A. farinosa Schwein. and A. pulverotecta Bas. -- R. E. Tulloss