BRIEF DESCRIPTION: This description is based on that of Bas (1962).

The cap of Amanita berkeleyi is 125 - 175 mm wide, plano-convex, ultimately somewhat depressed around a low, broad umbo, fleshy, sooty gray to grayish brown, sometimes with a yellowish tinge at the center, dry and rather shiny, at first with a slightly inflected and fuzzy margin, becoming straight and sometimes slightly sulcate with age. The cap is almost completely covered with very thin, concolorous or slightly darker, felted-pulverulent, crust-like remnants of volva sometimes breaking up into minute, thin, polygonate patches, especially at the center.

The gills are crowded, white, moderately broad to broad, and free to slightly adnexed.

The stem is 200 - 225 x 25 - 38 mm, sometimes subcylindrical, solid, concolorous with the cap or slightly paler, exannulate, somewhat floccose-scaly to fibrillose-scaly; remnants of volva are absent or scarce.

The spores measure 9 - 10.7 (-12.6) x 8.3 - 8.5 (-10.3) µm and are amyloid and globose to broadly ellipsoid. Clamps are not observed at bases of basidia.

This species was originally described from West Bengal, India at an elevation between 2000 and 2500 m. No information was available concerning its potential symbionts. A recent collection that seems to belong to A. berkeleyi was sent to me from Cambodia by David Arora. I do not know of any other material of this species that has been collected in recent years and reported in detail.

Bas placed the present species in his stirps Eriophora (see A. eriophora (Berk.) E.-J. Gilbert). -- R. E. Tulloss

Drawing: Dr. C. Bas (reproduced by courtesy of Persoonia, Leiden, the Netherlands, Bas 1969)

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Last changed 23 February 2009.
This page is maintained by R. E. Tulloss.
Copyright 2004, 2009 by Rodham E. Tulloss.