Amanita     Genus

This is a key to gilled mushrooms, that is, mushrooms having a definite cap with a fertile surface consisting of gills. The fruiting body usually also has a stem, although that may be lateral or absent (usually, then, the mushroom is growing from wood). You can use this key to identify mushrooms that you find.

Fruiting body containing fibers (usually in the stalk)

Amanita     Genus     Persoon: W. J. Hooker

Diagnosis

• Fruiting body having a combination of some of the following characteristics:
  
• Stalk growing out of a cup of cottony tissue called a volva (all white-spored mushrooms with a volva go here)
  
• Cap with scattered patches or flakes of the same sort of tissue as the volva (see second picture), easily peeled off
  
• Annulus (skirt-like ring on stalk)

• Amanitas typically have free gills, but not always

Microscropic Characters

• Gill trama divergent
  
• Spores smooth, thin-walled, lacking an apical pore

Comments

Narrow down your identification:

• All yellow-capped Amanitas can go here
  
• All Amanitas with concentric, toothed rings around the base of stalk definitely go here
  
• No volva; basal bulb sometimes small, often rimmed in one way or another
  
• Universal veil generally leaves remains on cap as small scattered patches

• Annulus almost always absent
  
• Volva present, saccate
  
• Cap margin not striate, or striate only right at the margin
  
• When they're young, the colored universal veil material on the cap always seems crusty to me (the brown stuff here), rather than flaky

• Annulus present
  
• Volva absent; base of stalk swollen and rooting
  
• Universal veil material often very powdery, or leaving very pointy remnants on the cap
  
• Cap usually white or grey

• Annulus always present
  
• Either volva present, sack-like and cap either white or olive brown, or
  
• Stalk with a basal bulb and cap either greyish brown or yellow

• Cap margin distinctly striate in maturity
  
• Either (most commonly) annulus absent and colors brown or grey, or
  
• (rarely) annulus present and colors bright: red, orange or yellow
  
• Volva sack-like in some species, in others clamped tightly to the stem, leaving traces in bands of color on the stalk

• Annulus present
  
• Volva absent
  
• Usually, the base of the stem has a little knob, but is smooth and otherwise unremarkable
  
• Entire cap (not just the margin) often becoming wavy in age

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