aldendirks's Favorites

HAY-F-006498

Habitat = small shrumps (4) occurring just above a large debris pile from some young trees that have all fallen in one area. One truffle had mold growing on it and grubs eating it. The other three were solid, no mold.

Scent when fresh = grape soda on a pan fried steak sitting on a rubber mat in the sun.

No UVF observed

Microscopy (2023.10.01)
Spores - round, rough with thick wall, ~up to 32.5 um in diameter, brown
Asci - 8 spores, 250 x 33 um,
paraphyse - swollen tips. 110 x 12 um
tissue was tough. Attempted water mounting, but everything was bound so tight I couldn't see individual structures. KOH mounting and then squishing allowed me to separate asci and paraphyses

p3 12-8

Young specimen. Fruiting hypogeously beneath Western red cedar and Douglas fir. Most likely a young tuckahoe- all white and leathery before hardening and turning crusty brown… Herbarium specimen available in Olympia, WA.

Gleba thick, leathery. All white, with small rhizomatous filaments surrounding.

Interior-potato like, hard. Odor: pleasant, sweet, faintly fungaloid.

Temp: mid 50’s.

Elevation: Sea level.

UPDATE on 7/11/24:
Mounted dry/powdery glebal tissue/spores on a glass slide in 3% KOH.
Spores: ROUND!!!! Thick walled and roughened on exterior. Making it impossible for this collection to be Wolfiporia(Wolfiporia have distinctly cylindrical spores).
Updated my identification for this collection to Mycenastrum corium based on round roughened spores, thick leathery Peridium(flaky textured) and brown spores at maturity(not white).

The closest sequence in Genbank is at 82% - except for one soil fungus sequence from North Carolina that's 99.18% similar. This is likely an undescribed species or a species that has been described a long time ago but has not been sequenced.

Near oak and other hardwoods in moss in a peninsula in Ohrbach Lake

I got quite a surprise when I looked at these odd "sporodochia" and they started to wriggle around on my slide after a few minutes!

picture 2-3 show individual immediately after mounting them in water still in their deshydrated form

Picture 8 show the corona (which was ciliate, albeit this trait did not show up on pictures)

Picture 9 show a corona and toe from another individual and picture 10 show the mastax.