About this site

Welcome to the Amanita Studies site.

This site provides data on taxa of the macrofungal, largely ectomycorrhizal genus Amanita and the family Amanitaceae (Agaricales, Basidiomycetes, Fungi) to which it belongs.  Text is supplemented by monotone or color illustrations of the fungi wherever possible.  This is likely always to be a work in progress.  The "Site News" feature (see the site navigation block on the left) can be used to learn of recent additions, deletions, or other changes to the site.

Note: The site is prepared to be viewed best via Mozilla Firefox with the browser window dimensions maximized (press the F11 key in Firefox).  Firefox can be downloaded without charge.

Three levels of detail are being implemented for data on species and selected supspecific taxa of Amanita:

  • The first level of detail is a good quality illustration.
  • The second level of detail is such an illustration (if one can be found) and a brief species description (with restrained use of Latinate terms) and emphasizing characters visible to the naked eye or with a 10× lens—although microscopic data (especially information about spores and basidial clamps) is also included when available.
  • The third level of detail includes both of the above (when an illustration is available) as well as a full technical description including illustrations of some microscopic characters (e.g., see A. umbrinolutea in Amanita sect. Vaginatae).
The available species listings are based on the last hypotheses regarding morphological taxonomy and systematics of Amanita.  The current count of names of accepted taxa included is 572.  We have done our best to exclude synonyms from section level lists, but there are probably several cases of taxonomic synonyms still to be found in the lists. We have achieved detail level "2" (although some descriptions need further work) for 518 of the listed taxa.

The tree of proposed supraspecific taxa (at ranks genus, subgenus, section, subsection, series, subseries, and stirps) can be viewed one supraspecific taxon at a time by starting with a click on "genus Amanita" in the navigation panel to the left. The user can descend a rank at a time through this tree in order to view its structure and the species included in each of the supraspecific ranks that are currently proposed. If the spelling of a desired species name is known, the user can go directly to the relevant species page from the home page by replacing text following (not including) the question mark ("?") in his/her browser's navigation bar by text of the form <genus><blankchar><species> (e.g., Amanita mutabilis). In fact, the user may go directly to any page on this site of which he/she knows the name by replacing the same text in the browser bar by that page name (e.g., stirps Caesarea or Bibliography or Biochemistry).

If the spelling of a species name is not known, the viewer can find and click on the species name in any alphabetically ordered rank level list for any supraspecific taxon list containing the target name. The list accessible from the home page is accessed by clicking "genus Amanita" in the navigation panel. This list includes all taxa presently in assigned to the genus and quite a few provisional names as well.

If the species or material of interest is itself uncertain, then the picturebook/checklists can be used to help locate possible species names.  Links are avaible directly to species pages from the checklists.  Keys are also available; but, because some of these documents are older, they may not provide links to species pages. We are automating creation of the checklists, which means that new check lists will become available more quickly than would ever have been possible on the old site of hand-coded pages.

In the near future we hope to have the ability to manipulate spore data and other numerical data in this site's new data grid. Eventually, we hope to support the keying and other diagnostic tasks of users by allowing those users to submit data for immediate, automatic evaluation and presentation in graphics with interpretative comments.

The editors welcome offers of assistance in the support and expansion of this website. Persons wishing to provide technical information on, or illustrations of, additional taxa should inquire by email or by postal service to either of the editors. Illustrations will be gratefully accepted; but, for the most part, can only be used on a species page if they are accompanied by well-dried voucher material of the pictured collection.

Key: ["t.b.d." = "to be [further] developed"]