Friday 13 March 2015

Chesser, 12/03/2015 - "Couldn't be Jaapia"

We started the evening with Gleocystidiellum porosum (curiously - see last post!). The gloeocystidia can be seen in the picture below:


Next up was the highlight of the evening - a tuberculate species on a saturated piece of wood (beech?) which also hosted various other things.


In broader view the spores were mostly dismissed as asco spores, until closer (and retrospective) inspection


It turned out that the navicular spores were dextrinoid, but with hyaline tips. Not readily seen from the below picture, but evident in the one above, is that these were the most abundant, with the entirely brown or hyaline spores being anomalous.


Basidia were 4-sterigmate, fairly long and skinny, as were their sterigmata.

(slide preparation SB)

The form of cystidia present can be seen here, with a loose spore at the tip

(slide preparation SB)

The final determination was Jaapia argillacea, which has very few records on NBN, as can be seen from the map below. The species readily keys out in Bernicchia (though without pictures!) and is also found in Ellis&Ellis. The voucher is making its way to the fungarium at RGBE.


Following this we re-visited Hyphoderma praetermissum - a species which we have seen a number of times now. Visible on the surface of the fruit body were a number of nematodes which had 'contributed' their resources to the fungus. Below are shots of the basidium and one type of cystidium, along with a live action shot of a doomed nitrogen donor. Also visible in the shot are the empty sausage-skin remnants of previous victims (or skin-shaped mycelium?).



Rounding off the night was Athelia epiphylla, from which I didn't obtain microphotographs