BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The cap of Amanita canescens is 100 - 163 mm wide, pale grayish brown to grayish brown in disc, grayish-brown to pale sordid tan beyond disc, white or whitish at margin, plano-convex, sometimes with umbo, may become slightly depressed at full expansion, subviscid to tacky when moist, shiny or dull over disk, shiny near margin.  The cap context is white, up to 17^± mm thick at stipe, thinning evenly to margin.  The cap margin is nonstriate, appendiculate, decurved throughout expansion; a universal veil is present as plentiful warts, subpyramidal to pyramidal with eroded/striate sides, becoming flocculence near margin, white to cream to tannish cream, darkening somewhat with age, friable, detersile, randomly distributed.

The gills are adnexed to free, then seceding, with short decurrent line on stipe apex, close to crowded, pale orangish cream to cream in mass, cream or watersoaked white with pale orange tint in side view, not changing when bruised or cut, proportionately narrow to moderately broad (10 - 11.5 mm broad), thin and rather fragile, with minutely fimbriate edge; short gills are subtruncate to rounded truncate to subattenuate to attenuate, plentiful, of diverse lengths, rather evenly distributed, with moderate length short gills alternating with gills, with very small short gills between every pair of gills and moderate length short gills.

The stipe is 124 - 140- × 24 - 25 mm, white or near white, narrowing upward (at least slightly), flaring at apex, with abundant white fibrils above partial veil, with white to cream fibrils becoming pale pinkish orange or pale salmon or pale orangish white or pale yellowish orange below (especially in response to handling); bulb 45 × 46 mm, subnapiform to ovoid, often split longitudinally here and there; context white, solid, with concolorous larva tunnels; partial veil superior, white to off-white, large, thick, submembranous, very delicate, usually falling to lower stipe or ground after full expansion of pileus; universal veil as occasional irregular patches, randomly distributed on upper bulb or not apparent.

The odor is not distinctive or is faintly fungoid or faintly of cedar wood or burnt sugar, but not unpleasant.  Taste of the species is not recorded.

The spores measure (6.5-) 7.5 - 10.8 (-12.0) x (4.5-) 4.8 - 6.2 (-6.8) µm and are ellipsoid to elongate (occasionally cylindric) and amyloid.  Clamps are absent from bases of basidia.

The species occurs in pine-oak woods and has a range extending at least from Long Island, New York, to Alabama, U.S.A. -- R. E. Tulloss