Wild Mushrooms (Amanita hemibapha)
- name Amanita hemibapha
- english name "Half-Dyed Slender Caesar"
I Found these little mushrooms on our homestead June of 2017. They were growing in shaded underbrush, I've got them identified as Amanita hemibapha. Besides being interesting for its edibility and controversial taxonomy, Amanita hemibapha and Amanita jacksonii are among the relatively few widely-consumed edible Amanita species. The genus Amanita is better known for its poisonous members the death angels (Amanita virosa, A. bisporigera, A. verna), the destroying angel or death cap (A. phalloides) and the hallucinogenic and toxic fly agaric (A. muscaria). There are many hundreds of species of Amanita across all the continents (except Antarctica), including dozens if not hundreds of species that are still unknown to science, waiting to be discovered. The species of Amanita are fairly narrowly defined, and we have little information about the edibility of most species. Because of the possibility of poisoning combined with the difficulty of identifying the species correctly, you should be very careful about eating any Amanita specimen. Amanita is definitely not recommended for mycological beginners. Every year many people are poisoned, thinking they are eating an edible species when they are in fact eating a deadly Amanita.
Amanita hemibapha
intro The following macroscopic description of Amanita hemibapha is based on (Vrinda et al., 2005).
cap The cap of A. hemibapha is 80 100 mm wide, it is hemispheric at first and rarely develops an umbo, it becomes convex and then planar with or without a central depression; the margin may be flared upward in age. At first the color is tomato red or capsicum red. With age and exposure, the disc becomes deep orange and the margin distinctly more yellow. The striations on the margin extend inward for half the cap radius. The cap flesh is up to 6 mm thick, white with a yellow band below the cap''s skin, and doesn't bruise when injured.
gills The gills are free, crowded, creamy white at first and pastel yellow to light yellow in mature specimens. They are up to 12 mm broad, unchanging when bruised and have an edge similar in color to the side surface. Infrequently, forked gills may be found. Short gills occur in at least three different lengths.
stem The stem of A. hemibapha is 70 150 × 6 12 mm, maize yellow above and pastel yellow below, narrows upward, is connected to the volva only at its very base, and bears a superior skirt-like, maize yellow ring with a striate upper surface. The volva is saccate, fleshy, essentially white with two exceptions (the inner surface is yellow or yellowish; and the outer surface may bear brownish patches at first). The internal limb can be rather robust and be placed between 1/3 and 2/3 the distance from the volva''s upper rim to its base. As in many (most?) other taxa of stirpes Caesarea and Hemibapha, the fleshy part of the internal limb is connected to a colored subfelted to felted sheath covering the stem in the button stage. In the present species, this material breaks up and is left as patches or scraps (often with a horizontal orientation) on the stem. In A. hemibapha, these remnants are subfelted and maize yellow to sunflower yellow.
spores The spores measure (7.5-) 7.9 10.1 (-10.2) × (5.4-) 5.5 6.3 (-6.5) µm and are ellipsoid to elongate and inamyloid. Clamps are common at bases of basidia. Spore measurements reported by Vrinda et al. (2005) are: (7.5-) 8.3 10.5 (-12.0) × (4.5-) 5.3 6.0 (-6.8) µm
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