BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The cap of Amanita flavescens is 40 - 90 mm wide, nonappendiculate, with a margin having striations extending 20 to 70% of the radius (although most are near the shorter extreme); it is sometimes rather pale at first, but becomes buff yellow to orangish cream to between beige and orangish cream, with thin flesh. In wounds there is a tendency to ochraceous staining. The flesh is white to whitish. The volva is absent or present as a smooth white patch or patches.

The gills are adnate by a line, white to pale orangish cream in side view, and close to crowded. The short gills are truncate to rounded truncate, common to plentiful, of diverse lengths, and unevenly distributed.

The stem is 75 - 120 x 9^- - 13 mm, white, subcylindric or narrowing upward, and exannulate. Its flesh is off-white. The saccate volva is membranous, white, and adhering to the stem base.

The spores measure (8.4-) 89.0 - 12.6 (-17.6) x (7.4-) 8.0 - 10.6 (-14.1) µm and are globose to subglobose to broadly ellipsoid to (infrequently) ellipsoid and inamyloid. Clamps are not observed at bases of basidia.

Amanita flavescens is known from Sweden and Norway and very similar material has been collected on the Island of Newfoundland, Canada. Given this latter fact, material from Greenland reported as A. crocea (Quél. in Bourd.) Singer ex Singer should be re-examined because of the possibility that it could be A. flavescens.  Amanita flavescens has not been well understood until its type was recently studied and fresh material was collected. For example, prior to 1999, many north European collections were determined as A. crocea.

The most similar taxa are those closely related to A. crocea (link above). The recently described A. ochraceopallida Contu seems to differ very little from A. flavescens. -- R. E. Tulloss