Created: 2008-01-15 09:13:23
By: Rod Tulloss (ret)
Summary: Comments on photo and the species

A very nice photograph of magniverrucata! This species has no pileipellis. The very thick universal veil arises directly from the tissue of the cap. This is not frequent in Amanita outside of the group called Amanita subsect. Vittadiniae in which a cap “skin” is almost always lacking. These taxa also do not seem to require a mycorrhizal relationship with a plant. DNA work (very recent and not published) shows the latter group to be “basal” (roughly speaking, “primitive”) in the genus Amanita. Lack of a pileipellis is the common state in Limacella, the other widely recognized genus of the Amanitaceae. What people call the “pileipellis” in Limacella is actually analogous to the volva of Amanita.