BRIEF DESCRIPTION: Fruiting bodies of Amanita fuliginea are small to medium-sized. The cap is 30 - 60 mm wide, convex, dark grey to blackish, darker over disc, innately fibrillose, usually glabrous; the cap's margin is smooth and non-appendiculate; and the cap's context is white to whitish.

The gills are free to subfree and white; the short gills are attenuate.

The stem is 80 - 130 x 5 - 20 mm, subcylindric to attenuate upwards, surface white to greyish, and covered with brownish squamules; the stem's basal bulb is 10 - 30 mm wide and subglobose. At the stem's base, the volva is limbate, with a free, white limb 3 - 8 mm high. The annulus is membranous and grey to greyish.

The spores measure (7.5-) 8.0 - 10.0 (-11.0) x (6.5)- 7.0 - 9.5 (-10.0) µm and are globose to subglobose and amyloid. Clamps are not present on the bases of basidia.

Originally described from Japan, A. fuliginea is very common in China, especially in the central parts.

Corner and Bas (1962) compared this species to A. alauda Corner & Bas and A. privigna Corner & Bas.

This species is deadly POISONOUS.  Many disasters have happened in central China in the last few years due to people's eating this mushroom. -- Zhu L. Yang