Peck's Yellow Dust Amanita

Appearance

Cap: The cap of this species is 33 - 45 mm wide and usually a vivid yellow, sometimes orange-yellow, occasionally yellow with an irregular orange area near or over the center, broadly bell-shaped to convex to plano-convex. The flesh is up to 4 mm thick above the stem. The margin is nonstriate (except possibly in age) and nonappendiculate. The volva is absent or randomly distributed in crumb-like, floccose warts; these are easily removed and yellow.

Gills: The gills are free, subcrowded to crowded, off-white to cream in mass, pale cream in side view, up to 3 mm broad, with a white edge despite the yellow pigment in the annulus.

Stem: The stem is up to 110 × 4 - 10 mm, white (except occasionally above the annulus), narrowing upward, barely flaring at the apex, finely fibrillose below the annulus, finely pruinose above the annulus. The flesh of the stem is white, solid in part, stuffed in part, with a central cylinder up to 4 mm wide. The stipe's bulb is fusiform to ellipsoid to subclavate to subnapiform and up to 20 × 13 mm. The annulus is superior, small, skirt-like, pale yellow to yellow (rarely whitish) and striate above. The lower side of the annulus is smooth closer to the color of the volva of which some remnants may remain below the annulus' edge. The volva is yellow, friable, and often found in sparse fragments around the bulb or on the lower stem.

Distribution

The species is known from conifer and oak forests in southeastern Canada at least as far north as the Island of Newfoundland and the northeastern USA, at least as far south as the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and the mountains of western South Carolina (pine-oak forest). It may be more common in the northern half of that range.