Amanita flavoconia

Key to Gilled Mushrooms Key

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.

Agaricales Order

Fruiting body containing fibers (usually in the stalk)

Amanita Genus

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)

Validae Section

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

Links from Look-alikes
Small Yellow Smooth Bulb Amanitae SubSection

Base of stalk slightly and smoothly bulbous
Cap some shade of yellow; less than 5" across, and usually less than 3
Annulus usually present, but it may be fragile and easily lost, or plastered to the stem and overlooked

Amanita flavoconia G. F. Atkinson

Here are the characters that distinguish this species from the others in its group. For its more general characters, see higher up on the page.
If there's just a few words or a microscopic feature here, a more thorough description can be found above.

Diagnosis

Cap orangish, egg-yolk yellow at first, fading to just yellow in age; margin not striate, except perhaps in extreme decrepitude
Universal veil material yellow, forming yellow powder or flakes at the base of the stalk

Microscropic Characters

Spores 7-9 x 4.5-5 µm

Comments

In this picture, the cap and flakes on the cap have both faded much more around the margin than on the disk
In the forest, this mushroom is typically small and gracile (see photo in A. E. Bessette, D. W. Fischer & A. R. Bessette (1997) ); when growing in the open, it can get quite large and robust (see photos in Lincoff (1987) ). It has taken a lot of convincing for me to accept these both as the same mushroom

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