Torrendia
Torrendia pulchella Bres. (≡Amanita torrendia Justo).
Line drawing by C. Bas, used with his permission.
NOTA: All members of this genus have been transferred to
Amanita by Justo (Justo et al.
2010).
The species of
Torrendia Bres. are (1) secotioid; (2) expand from within a membranous, universal veil; (3) have longitudinally acrophysalidic stipe tissue (as in
Amanita); (4) have inamyloid spores (with one possible exception); and (5) have clamps on the bases of their basidia (with the same possible exception). Taxa of the Mediterranean region and
Australia have been assigned to
Torrendia. At least some of the taxa of this genus (including the type species) appear to have had ancestors in common with species of
Amanita section Caesareae [
key (over 540 Kb PDF) ]. As in the case of
Amarrendia (
above), the status of the genus
Torrendia is under on-going investigation. At present, the editors of these pages favor recombination of all taxa of
Torrendia in
Amanita. It is very likely that the species of
Torrendia are unlikely to share a common ancestor that is not also the ancestor of numerous other species in both subgenera of
Amanita—species with both amyloid and inamyloid spores have been reported for
Torrendia.
The type species of
Torrendia is
T. pulchella Bres. (1902). See Malençon (
1955), Bas (
1975), Miller and Horak (
1992), Tulloss (
2005b).
[
NB: Images and well-documented dried collections of
Torrendia are sought by both editors.]