Ascocoryne cylichnium, Dalgety bay 15/01/2018

A small ascomycete pulled from a rotten log at the weekend which gave me the runaround at first.

Ascocoryne sarcoides is a frequent sight in any woodland but one disc of it's congener Ascocoryne cylichnium completely threw me. There was only one disc, which led to some keying false starts. Only working back from the fantastic spores was I able to put the other pieces in place. These spores bud off mini-spores, which is a very funky thing to do. You can see from the pics below that the images are full of these tiny spores which I had managed not to see as significant until I already knew they were.

chopped in half for  squishing

Ascus tips blued with iodine

Spores and tons of mini-spores

spores and baby-spores

Spore illustration in Dennis

Fungi of Switzerland

Spore and baby

Another nice find on the same wood was this fantastic Brachysporium masonii

Another hyphomycete - Ascodichaena rugosa

With all the twig-bothering that's going on related to lichens and pyrenomycetes you can't help running into hyphomycetes. This one took a bit of running down, partly because I was searching under the wrong tree in the literature, but turned out to be Ascodichaena rugosa. Very cute under the microscope, as is often the way with hyphomycetes.

In context - terrible photo though