Chesser 09/04/2015

Psathyrella spadiceogrisea

Almost immediately identified on field characters and time of year, but we persevered with keying anyway. After some investigation it seemed that we would never have identified this species that way. Noted was the cellular nature of the cuticle which narrows down your field of search greatly (though not examined or at least photographed). Also worth noting was that the key required this species to be "not radially grooved" although the species descripton calls it "striate". Hmmm. Three dimensionally striate?

Lichenomphalina ericetorum
Our next species has a checkered past with its lichen association causing some trouble. In fact to record this I had to call it Lichenomphalia umbellifera. There's an interesting blurb about it here: link. Three noteworthy features are the decurrent gills, the dark area at the base of the gills on the stipe and the algae at the base of the stipe. This one was from Mossmorran in Fife

Algae

Trametes ochracea
Another one from Cullaloe and another species for which  field characters win the day. Spore checking was done for shape and size. If you cut into the fb you can see there's no black line as there is in T.versicolor

Hyphoderma praetermissum
A species we've seen many times before. This was on decorticated wood and formed a thin waxy rosaceous layer over the wood . Sphaerocysts were not found but two types of cystidia were located and spores were ok. I didn't note where this one was from - perhaps Bawsinch.

Botryobasidium subcoronatum
An old favourite, quickly processed and identified on a brief description

Tubulicrinis subulatus
Another one seen before but not at Chesser meetings, this is a fine performer under the microscope, and the cystidia are visible under a hand lens

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

Gloeocystidiellum porosum

From Cullaloe 24/01/2015.

This same species was picked up a couple of weeks ago but not definitively identified. When I dig up the picture of that one I'll add it to the bottom. The surface cracking of this species and the j+ spores are significant early flags. The abundant gloeocystidia at first look recall Tubulicrinis, with their scattered but significant presence. While Ellis and Ellis only list two species, including this one, CNE runs to 9. Spore size and ornamentation help to nail ID, along with the clamps on the hyphae. Substrate was deciduous, probably Fagus.

Tuberculate and cracked

J+

Iodine reaction visible on dark edges

Spores c. 6x3.5, faintly ornamented

Basidia 4-sterigmate

Gloeocystidia abundant

Close up

Single Cy

Hyphal clamp

In Meltzers

and Cotton Blue

From an earlier encounter, here's the same species in a form that threw me off the scent - on moss!

Exidiopsis calcea (maybe!)

Chesser Meet, 15./01/2015

Exidiopsis, Balerno (?), on conifer (?)

This nice Exidiopsis performed well under the lens. Keyed out very quickly in E&E to Exidiopsis, but then two potential candidates emerge, depending on colour - E.effusa and E.calcea. If it's pinkish/lilaceous then effusa is the favourite.

The red flag on effusa is that the substrate appeared to be coniferous, whereas effusa has a preference for deciduous wood. The description of calcea is very close, but it should lack the coloration described for effusa. It's not particularly colourful.

The other factor which suggests calcea is that according to the Swiss the spore size for effusa tops out at 15um, whereas ours were definitely bigger.

On balance I think this is E.calcea, but I don't recall a concensus on the night.

Pelicular resupinate, <0.5mm, colour?

Spores j-, hyaline, smooth, c.17.c x 6um, cylindrical-allantoid

Basidium with epibasida @ x1000

Top view showing form

Basidium septa

Mycobank