Heat’s been bad here this year, like all over. We had a recent rain there that popped a lot of things up, but they still got roasted afterwards. Hope we get some more precip. soon so I can find more interesting things.

The point was just that, for some reason, two collections from 9 July 2011 from Hawn St. Pk., both seemed to have been rather stressed fruiting bodies before they were dried. That’s all.

R.

Is that observation also S10, or should that comment appear here?

Thanks,
Patrick

Well, it was worthwhile looking at the spores again as I mentioned. I did find larger (and probably more typical) spores; nevertheless, the specimen seems to have gotten a bit old and dry before it went into the dryer. I decided I had to believe my own data and added the collection to the material of the techtab on the WAO page for Amanita sp-S10. So now that species is represented by a collection that was too young and a collection that was too old. Not an ideal situation; so if you (or anyone else reading this!) can find another collection, I will be delighted to add it (them?) into the process of getting a better grip on this brilliant colored critter.

Very best,

R.

Hi Rod,

Thanks for your assessment of this one. We found about 3 of them that day, including a button, but someone else either got them or we “recycled.” I put
a question to our MOMS Facebook group to see if someone actually kept and dried
one of them.

It’s been awful dry here lately, but I may be able to get down there some time after the next rain to see if any more have come up. Probably late on a weekday, going up to Normal, IL instead this weekend. I’ll let you know.

— Patrick

The spores are proportionately narrower than those of A. jacksonii. Considering the color distribution on the cap and the spores, I’m inclinded to say that this is not A. jacksonii. I’m going to spend a little more time looking at spores from the gills near the cap edge because these mature last, and I am hoping that I might find some “closer to typical” spores in this region.

Unfortunately, the range of spore size is very small and the hoped-for “bell curve” shape of the distribution of spore length is truncated…indicating that there would have been larger values of length, but that something (probably age of the basidiome prior to drying) affected the spore size, which is abnormal. This creates a problem for determination because the “original” collection of sp-S10 was apparently immature and bears “giant” spores. Hence, if the two collections belong to a single species, neither are typical in terms of spore size and shape distribution. Headache. Patrick, I hope you find another collection. If you can get a spore print and then dry the specimen as quickly as possible, it’s possible for us to make some progress on understanding sp-S10.

Very best,

R.

Patrick sent the specimen, which arrived while I was out of the country. I’ve just finished two of the specimens he sent (A. spreta) and will try this one next.

R.

Yes…. Was thinking ol’ S10….

…is possible:

www.amanitaceae.org/?Amanita sp-S10

R.

about jacksonii in this case. We’ve been getting a bicolor taxon like this for several years from the general area of the SE states of the U.S. More in a bit.

R.