| name | Amanita elegans |
| name status | insufficiently known |
| author | Beeli |
| english name | "Elegant Slender Caesar" |
| intro |
The following description is based on Beeli (1935). |
| cap | The cap of Amanita elegans is 40 - 60 mm wide, plano-convex, fuligineous, approaching black in the center, with a long striate margin. No volval remnant is present. The flesh is thin. |
| gills | Gills are free, white, pointed at both ends, 3 mm broad. |
| stem | Its stem is 60 - 90 × 4 - 6 mm, white, fibrillose, stuffed, cylindric, and detaches easily from the cap. The stem has a ring that is placed near the middle, thin, very fragile, and skirt-like. The volva is saccate, membranous, white or dark brown. The flesh is white. |
| odor/taste | The taste is acrid. |
| spores | The spores measure 7.5 - 9 × 6.5 - 8 µm and are subglobose to broadly ellipsoid. Clamps are said to be absent at bases of basidia by Pegler and Shah-Sm. (1997). Beeli measured spores as 6.5 - 8 µm in diameter and inamyloid. Gilbert (1940) presents six drawings of spores, however only two are in side view. These measure (6.7-) 7.6 - 8.1 (-9.1) × 6.1 - 7.1 (-8.6) μm and are subglobose to broadly ellipsoid. |
| discussion |
The present species was originally described from the Belgium Congo in dry forests. Pegler and Shah-Smith report this species form Zambia and Malawi in association with open Brachystegia woodland. Their description differs from that of Beeli only in adding yellowish-brown or yellowish-pink to the list of colors observed on the cap. Further examination of well-annotated material would be valuable in determining variation in this species. The spore drawings in Beeli (1935) and Gilbert (1940) confirm that the spores are not truly globose. They are subglobose to broadly ellipsoid. The cap in Madame Goossens' drawing is considerably more gray than the original description might lead you to believe and while the margin is dark while young, in the oldest specimen depicted the margin of the cap is pale, probably because the skin of the cap has been stretched or torn in the area of the expanded striations to show the white flesh and gills. There is a confusing pink tint in some of the 1935 reproduction of the Goossens watercolors which may have led Pegler and Shah-Sm. (1997) to believe that the cap could have a pink tint. The paintings of Madame Goossens show that the volva encloses 20 - 35% of the stem. Madame Goossens' watercolor shows a species with a totally elongating stem inserting in an extraordinarily thick, saccate volva. Gilbert interpreted this as a bulb similar to that at the base of the stem of A. virosa (Fr.) Bertillon in DeChambre; however there is no question that this species is not in section Phalloideae because its spores are inamyloid. If it is correct that this species lacks clamps on its basidia it would be an example of an annulate species that is quite nonconformant with others in section Caesareae. Since the subhymenium is reported as cellular, which is consistent with the Caesareae, it would be worthwhile to re-examine the bases of basidia for clamps.—R. E. Tulloss |
| brief editors | RET |
| name | Amanita elegans | ||||||||
| author | Beeli. 1931. Bull. Soc. Roy. Bot. Belgique 63: 105, pl. 8 (fig. 5). | ||||||||
| name status | insufficiently known | ||||||||
| english name | "Elegant Slender Caesar" | ||||||||
| synonyms |
≡Ariella elegans (Beeli) E.-J. Gilbert. 1940. Iconogr. Mycol. (Milan) 27, suppl. (1): 70; tab. 10 (fig. 5). The editors of this site owe a great debt to Dr. Cornelis Bas whose famous cigar box files of Amanita nomenclatural information gathered over three or more decades were made available to RET for computerization and make up the lion's share of the nomenclatural information presented on this site. | ||||||||
| MycoBank nos. | 211077 | ||||||||
| GenBank nos. |
Due to delays in data processing at GenBank, some accession numbers may lead to unreleased (pending) pages.
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| ||||||||
| holotypes | BR (implicit) | ||||||||
| intro |
The following text may make multiple use of each data field. The field may contain magenta text presenting data from a type study and/or revision of other original material cited in the protolog of the present taxon. Macroscopic descriptions in magenta are a combination of data from the protolog and additional observations made on the exiccata during revision of the cited original material. The same field may also contain black text, which is data from a revision of the present taxon (including non-type material and/or material not cited in the protolog). Paragraphs of black text will be labeled if further subdivision of this text is appropriate. Olive text indicates a specimen that has not been thoroughly examined (for example, for microscopic details) and marks other places in the text where data is missing or uncertain. The following material is derived from the protolog of the present taxon, (Beeli 1935), and (Gilbert 1940 & 1941). | ||||||||
| pileus | from protolog: 40 - 60 mm wide, fuligineous, darker over disc, plano-convex; context thin, white, fleshy; margin long striate (0.5+R per figure); universal veil absent (per figure). | ||||||||
| lamellae | from protolog: free. density not described, white, 3 mm broad; lamellulae not described. | ||||||||
| stipe | Stipe: from protolog: 80 - 90 × 4 - 6 mm, white, cylindric, fibrous, glabrous, cylindric, totally elongating (per figure), easily detached from pileus; context solid, white, firm; partial veil submedian, very thin, ephemeral; universal veil saccate, membranous, fleshy (per figure), enclosing lowest one-fifth to one-third of stipe (per figure). | ||||||||
| odor/taste | from protolog: Odor not described. Taste acrid. | ||||||||
| macrochemical tests |
none described. | ||||||||
| pileipellis | from Beeli (1935): filamentous hyphae hyaline, broad, with allantoid segments. | ||||||||
| pileus context | not described. | ||||||||
| lamella trama | not described. | ||||||||
| subhymenium | not described. | ||||||||
| basidia | not described. | ||||||||
| universal veil | not described. | ||||||||
| stipe context | not described. | ||||||||
| partial veil | not described. | ||||||||
| lamella edge tissue | not described. | ||||||||
| basidiospores |
from protolog: 7 - 8 μm wide, hyaline, smooth, globose. [Note: No sporograph generatable.—ed.] Beeli (1935): inamyloid. from Gilbert (1940 & 1941): [2/1/1] (6.7-) 7.6 - 8.1 (-9.1) × 6.1 - 7.1 (-8.6) μm, (L = 7.8 μm; W = 6.6 μm; Q = 1.14 - 1.25; Q = 1.20), hyaline, smooth, inamyloid, subglobose to broadly ellipsoid; apiculus sublateral and truncate conic (per figure); contents not described; color in deposit not recorded. [Note: Spore measurements are taken from the two spore drawings of (Gilbert 1940: tab. X (fig. 5)) that are in apparent lateral view.—ed.] | ||||||||
| ecology | from protolog: Scattered. On soil in dry forest. | ||||||||
| material examined |
from protolog: CONGO, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF: PROV. EQUATEUR—Territoire Lisala - Binga [2°23'41" N/ 20°25'25" E, 361 m], | ||||||||
| citations | —R. E. Tulloss | ||||||||
| editors | RET | ||||||||
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| name | Amanita elegans |
| bottom links |
[ Keys & Checklists ] |
| name | Amanita elegans |
| bottom links |
[ Keys & Checklists ] |
Spore data sets and their composite
Each spore data set is intended to comprise a set of measurements from a single specimen made by a single observer; and explanations prepared for this site talk about specimen-observer pairs associated with each data set. Combining more data into a single data set is non-optimal because it obscures observer differences (which may be valuable for instructional purposes, for example) and may obscure instances in which a single collection inadvertently contains a mixture of taxa.
Text and User-Generated Sporographs are published under the Creative Commons License.
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