Amanita punctata
Amanita punctata is up to 87 mm wide, at first globose, then convex, sometimes gibbous, then planar to slightly depressed, smooth, slightly sticky when moist, nonappendiculate, with a markedly striate to sulcate and rather short margin. The cap is very dark gray to grayish brown to smoke gray, and is darkest over the disc. The volva is present as occasional patches (especially in young material), with most of them near the margin.
The gills are just free, with rather long decurrent lines on the stem apex, close, grayish white to very pale smoke gray, with edge darker, and finely decorated. Short gills are apparently absent.
The stem is 100 - 130 x 13± mm, ground color, slightly narrowing upward, finely striate, finely spotted with grayish fibrous squamules, exannulate, with hollow flesh. The saccate volva is sheathing, ample, and grayish lead color. According to the illustration in the original description, the discoloring of the volval sac is dominate in the upper part of the free limb (see above).
The spores measure (10.5-) 11.7 - 15.6 (-21) x (9.9-) 11.4 - 14.7 (-20) µm and are globose to subglobose and inamyloid. Clamps were unobservable at bases of basidia in the lectotype and all paratype collections.
The species was described from the state of South Australia, Australia. In numerous modern references to A. punctata, a species with a brown or red-brown cap (not gray) is depicted and significantly smaller spores are reported. It is very likely that such taxa or such a taxon depicted in east Asian and Australian works under the name "A. punctata" is not the present species. The species presented under the present name by Wood (1997) with a pallid gray to mouse gray to occasionally gray-brown cap, with large white (not lead colored) patches of volva on the cap, and strongly globose spores for the most part less than12 µm long involves a misapplication of the present name (Note: the spores depicted in Wood's illustrations are not all globose. Indeed, some are broadly ellipsoid.).
The graying gills and volva suggest a relationship with species such as the group similar to A. submembranacea (Bon) Gröger, not infrequent in the Northern Hemisphere. -- R. E. Tulloss
- Amanita punctata, Blackbutt Creek Walk, Killara and Gordon, Sydney Australia, March 21, 2008
- Amanita punctata Sheldon's Forest, Pymble, New South Wales, Australia after rain, January 2010
