BRIEF DESCRIPTION: Amanita mairei is an exannulate species with a 50 - 90 mm wide cap having predominantly brownish and grayish tints, but also sometimes with an olivaceous tint or with violaceous tint at maturity (according to Foley), is never a pure gray and never appears metallic.  The marginal striations of the cap are rather short.  The volval sac is often left in significant part on the cap.

The gills are free to very narrowly adnate, close, white at first, sometimes taking on a pale pink tint, finally becoming somewhat grayish, 6 - 9 mm broad, rarely forking; the short gills are infrequent and irregularly distributed, truncate to excavate-truncate to subattenuate.

The white stem is 50 - 90 x 10 -15 mm and rounded at the base; it bears the remains of a membranous-submembranous, white, saccate volva.  Watercolors by R. Maire and Foley in the Institute de Botanique, Montpellier (MPU) sometimes show the entire free limb of the volva ripped away by the expansion of the fruiting body.

The spores measure (9.5-) 11.0 - 14.0 (-17.5) x (6.6-) 7.1 - 10.0 (-11.5) µm and are broadly ellipsoid to ellipsoid to elongate and inamyloid.  Clamps may occasionally be found at bases of basidia.

The species is associated with pine around the Mediterranean basin and occurs with exported pine at least in the Canary Islands.  An early collection by R. Maire in Egypt (represented in MPU at least by a watercolor) is annotated as occurring with Eucalyptus.

The species can have a stipe that is quite robust as clearly illustrated in one of Maire's watercolors (above, lower row)] as well as taking on the more common, gracile forms illustrated on this page.  The present species is clearly distinct from A. argentea Huijsman, although the names are often mistakenly considered taxonomic synonyms in the literature of the last half century.  Other taxa with which to compare A. mairei are A. huijsmanii F. Massart & Rouzeau and A. supravolvata Lanne.
-- R. E. Tulloss