Amanita daucipes

🏷️ Description

Meet one of North America’s more dramatic and peculiar fungi: Amanita daucipes, known by evocative common names like the Carrot-Foot Amanita, Turnip-Foot Amanita, or Carrot-Footed Lepidella. This impressive mushroom is a member of the Amanitaceae family within the Agaricales order — a clan famous for its beautiful yet sometimes treacherous species.

With its distinctive bulbous, carrot-like base and dense covering of orangish-brown warts, A. daucipes is a woodland oddity you’ll never forget — though you probably won’t want to smell it twice! 👃🍖

📖 Taxonomy & Naming

First described in 1856 by Miles Joseph Berkeley and Camille Montagne as Agaricus daucipes, this species has taken a winding taxonomic path. It was renamed Amanitopsis daucipes in 1887 and finally placed in its rightful genus Amanita by Curtis Gates Lloyd in 1899.

It belongs to Amanita subgenus Lepidella, a group known for their amyloid spores (which stain in iodine) and often unpleasant odors. The species name daucipes translates to “carrot foot”, a nod to its large, spindle- or turnip-shaped base.

🔎 Identification

Amanita daucipes is a medium to very large mushroom, recognized by:

🍄 Cap

• Size: 2.36 to 7.87 inches (6 to 20 cm) wide

• Shape: Convex when young, flattening with age

• Surface: Dry to shiny, white with pale orange hues

• Warts: Densely covered with white to pale orange or reddish-brown conical warts (remnants of the universal veil). These warts become fluffier near the margin and can be easily removed (detersile) without leaving scars.

Older specimens often lose their orange tints and veil fragments may dangle from the cap’s edge.

🌿 Gills

• Type: Free, moderately narrow, and closely spaced

• Color: White to yellowish-white

• Lamellulae: Short gills that don’t reach the stem, with rounded to tapering tips

📏 Stem & Basal Bulb

• Size: 3 to 8 inches (7.5 to 20 cm) long, 0.3 to 1 inch (0.8 to 2.5 cm) thick

• Color: White, sometimes with a pale orange tint

• Surface: Covered in tufts of soft, woolly hairs, bruising slowly to match the cap’s color

• Partial Veil: Forms a fragile, ephemeral ring on the upper stem, typically falling off as the mushroom matures

• Basal Bulb: Large, 6 by 4.5 inches (up to 15 by 12 cm) , spindle- or turnip-shaped with pinkish to reddish veil remains and sometimes longitudinal splits

🥩 Flesh & Odor

• Texture: Firm, white

• Smell: Strong and peculiar — a mix of sweetness, decaying protein, old ham bone, and soap. Some liken it to a whiff of chlorine mingled with rotting meat. Older specimens are especially pungent. 🤢

🔬 Microscopic Features

• Spore Print: White, cream, or yellowish

• Spores: Ellipsoid to elongate (sometimes kidney-shaped), (8–11 by 5–7 μm), thin-walled, translucent, and amyloid

• Basidia: Club-shaped, 4-spored, (30–50 by 7–11 μm), with clamp connections

• Cheilocystidia: Abundant, spherical to club-shaped, (15–40 by 10–28 μm)

• Cap Cuticle: (75–180 μm) thick, made of gelatinized, interwoven hyphae (2–5 μm wide)

🌳 Habitat & Distribution

Amanita daucipes is mycorrhizal, partnering with trees for mutual benefit. You’ll find it:

• Growing alone or scattered in mixed hardwood and coniferous forests, with a strong preference for oak-dominated stands

• Occasionally in disturbed soils and roadsides

• Most abundant in the Appalachian Mountains and extending from New Jersey to Texas and Sonora, Mexico

Associated trees include oak (Quercus), hickory (Carya), and birch (Betula).

Once considered rare, it’s now known to be fairly common in eastern North American oak forests.

⚠️ Toxicity & Edibility

While the edibility of A. daucipes remains unknown, it belongs to the Lepidella section of Amanita, which includes several dangerously poisonous mushrooms. Given its unsettling odor and family reputation, it’s strongly advised not to consume this species. 🚫🍽️

👀 Look-Alikes

It resembles Amanita chlorinosma, but you can tell them apart by:

• Color differences

• A. daucipes’ larger basal bulb

• Its more pronounced, tougher volval warts, tinged with orange-yellow to reddish-brown

📜 Synonyms

• Agaricus daucipes Berk. & Mont. (1856)

• Amanitopsis daucipes (Berk. & Mont.) Sacc. (1887)