Amanita strobiliformis
Description
Amanita strobiliformis is a rare heat-loving mushroom growing from summer to autumn under various deciduous trees, often oaks and lindens, especially on calcareous substrates in warmer areas. It also occurs in habitats influenced by humans, e.g. in parks.
The cap is rough with warts which sometimes fall away leaving the cap smooth, whitish, and sometimes brown. The gills are free and rounded behind. The veil is large and sometimes adheres to the margin of the cap. The stem is long, thick, white, bulbous, and sometimes weighs a pound.
There are different views on A. strobiliformis edibility. Some sources advise against consuming them, other sources consider them edible. Anyway, Ultimate Mushroom does not recommend collecting and eating this fungus.
In Europe, it grows from the Mediterranean region to the Netherlands and England, and maybe further north.
Common names: Warted Amanita, European Pine Cone Lepidella, Muchomůrka šiškovitá (Czech Republic).
Mushroom Identification
Cap
50 - 220 mm wide, convex to plano-convex, sometimes with a flattened center, white to pale gray or pale brownish gray, with a nonsulcate, appendiculate margin. Thick remnants of white to pale gray or brownish-gray, (sub)floccose-felted volva form crusts, patches, or coarse, shapeless, to truncate-subpyramidal warts.
Gills
The gills are white to cream, crowded, and moderately broad. The short gills are obliquely truncate to attenuate.
Stem
The stem is 80 - 180 (-220) × 16 - 30 (-40) mm, about equal, mostly thickset, white, flocculose, with subfloccose-felted volval remnants forming one or more ridges, or rows of rather coarse, mostly shapeless warts. An apical annulus may be present at first, but it is soft, fragile, and evanescent. The stipe has a basal bulb that can be rather large (up to 80 × 50 mm).
Spores
The spores measure 10 - 13.5 (-14.5) × 7 - 8.5 (-9.5) µm and are amyloid and ellipsoid to elongate. Clamps are absent at bases of basidia.
Spore Print
White.
Habitat
It is associated mycorhizal with deciduous trees, preferring scattered forest, or woodland borders, usually on alkaline soil. It grows singular fruits and sometimes clusters.
Chemical Reactions
Flesh is stained with phenol aniline first red, then brown, slides with formalin after a few minutes dirty pink, and flesh with phenol also first red, then brown.
Look-Alikes
-
In adult species, veil fragments are mostly absent. The cap remains somewhat domed. The stem ring is usually high up and not very substantial and without a distinct smell.
-
Has a whiteish cap with flat veil fragments. The stem is smoother with a distinct persistent ring.
-
Rare, fewer fragments of vela (scale) on the cap, velum around the cap.
Amanita solitaria
Smaller, the scales on the cap are pointed.
-
The stem is not thick at the base and is densely covered with protruding vela scales.
Amanita lepiotoides
Mediterranean species, flesh red when cut.
History
The binomial name was created by the French mycologist Jean-Jacques Paulet as Hypophyllum strobiliforme, to be read in his work Iconographie des Champignons from 1812 and renamed as Agaricus strobiliformis by the Italian mycologist Carlo Vittadini in his Descrizione dei funghi mangerecci più comuni dell' Italia e de'velenosi che possono co'medesimi confondersi since 1835.
The species was finally correctly transferred to the genus Amanita under the retention of the epithet by the French physician Louis-Adolphe Bertillon (1821–1883), to be verified in his 1866 work Dictionnaire Encyclopédique de Science Médicales.
The specific epithet strobiliformis means shaped like a strobile or cone-like, as in fir cone or the reproductive organs of club mosses.
Synonyms
Hypophyllum strobiliforme (Paulet ex Vittad.) Paulet, 1812
Amanita solitaria var. strobiliformis (Paulet ex Vittad.) Costantin & L.M. Dufour, 1891
Armillaria strobiliformis (Paulet ex Vittad.) Locq., 1952
Amanita solitaria f. strobiliformis (Paulet ex Vittad.) Cetto, 1983
Amanita pellita Paulet ex Bertill., 1866
Amanita ovoidea var. ammophila Beeli, 1930
Agaricus strobiliformis Paulet ex Vittad.
Photo sources:
Photo 1 - Author: Strobilomyces (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Photo 2 - Author: Amanita_strobiliformis_110828wa.jpg: Strobilomycesderivative work: Ak ccm (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Photo 3 - Author: GLJIVARSKO DRUSTVO NIS from Serbia (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Photo 4 - Author: GLJIVARSKO DRUSTVO NIS from Serbia (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Photo 5 - Author: © 1971markus (CC BY-SA 4.0)