>BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The cap of Amanita fulva is usually free of volval remnants, 35 - 95 mm wide, umbonate at maturity, with a strongly striate margin; it is orange-brown, paler at the margin, and darker (even very dark brown) in the center. Infrequently, roughly polygonal pieces of the volva may stick to the surface.

The gills are free, close to subcrowded, white to pale cream in mass, and up to 6.5 mm broad; the short gills are truncate, of varying length, adjacent to margin or stipe or neither.

The stem is 80 - 150 x 6 - 20 mm, predominantly white, and exannulate, with a membranous sack-like volva at the base. The external surface of the 30 - 80 x 8 - 35 mm volva commonly takes on red-brown to rusty stains.

The spores measure (9.0-) 10.0 - 12.5 (-19.3) x (8.2-) 9.3 - 12.0 (-15.5) µm and are globose to subglobose (rarely broadly ellipsoid) and inamyloid. Clamps are absent from bases of basidia.

Amanita fulva is widely distributed in Europe in association with pine, spruce, birch, beech, and oak.

While this name is applied to collections made in the Americas, no such collection examined by me has ever proven to be the European species. One American taxon to which the European name has been incorrectly applied is Amanita fuligineodisca Tulloss, Ovrebo & Halling (known from Honduras to Andean Colombia, occurring with oak); several others remain to be formally described.

A short key-fragment useful in distinguishing A. crocea (Quél. in Bourd.) Singer ex Singer, A. flavescens (E.-J. Gilbert & S. Lund.) Contu, A. romagnesiana Tulloss, and A. subnudipes (Romagn.) Tulloss as well as the species most phenetically similar to A. fulva is available. -- R. E. Tulloss