The Phenomenon of Synchronous Fruiting

Christian Schwarz © 2011

Above is pictured Hygrocybe virescens Sm. & Hes.; a waxcap that is considered very rare in California since its discovery.

The species was originally described from a single collection in 1956 in Trinidad, Humboldt County, in northern California, and since then has been found very infrequently.

However, this past November saw a terrific coordinated fruiting from Santa Cruz County in central California to Mendocino Co. 400 kilometers apart. Within 4 days, seven different fruiting localities had been reported.

The rarity of the species is not the issue that fascinates me.

I want to understand more clearly the commonly reported myco-phenomenon of synchronous fruiting of rare macrofungal taxa across large geographic distances - often much farther than can reasonably considered climatically similar, or in any way parallel.

Just this past August, as soon as Albatrellus caeruleoporus came in at an eastern North American foray, Noah Siegel mentioned that he then expected it to be present at his historical spots for it - and voila, there it was.

Christian Schwarz © 2011

Pushing incredulity even further, I found it in Mendocino County in California only months after having been introduced to it for the first time at that eastern locality.

Of course this was over a distance of 5, 100 km, and that is simply too far to consider anything but coincidence... right?

Lincoff, Sturgeon, and Ristich noticed this pattern in Eastern North America with Leucopholiota decorosa, among other species, and I think some European mycologists have observed it in Squamanita (and probably other instances of which I'm ignorant).

Does anyone care to venture a hypothesis?

All the best,
Christian Schwarz

Happy New Year 2012

The Danish mystery Agaric 2011

Though the Danish funga has been studied for years we each year finds between 30 and 70 new species for the country—and in addition a number of seemingly undescribed ones. On the borderline between these two groups is a collection I made this summer on wood chips on a small path on the Danish island Læsø. The description reads:

Pileus 15-25 mm, convex, yellow brown, covered with small, upright, fibrillose scales, near the margin with white, fibrillose remnant of velum universale; lamellae adnate to somewhat emarginate or slightly decurrent, L20, l6-7, cream to pale yellow brown, margin floccose-crenelate; stipe to 25 x 3 mm, dull brown with a whitish veil zone slightly abowe the middle and felty at the base; smell and taste none; spp. dark greyish brown. Spores 4-4.5 x 7-7.5 µm, amygdalaeform to ellipsoid, smooth, brown with an obscure germ pore; cheilocystidia irregularly clavate to monilliform, 8-13 µm wide; pileipellis of upright, brown, strongly ornamented hyphae; clamps +.

Now, descriptions are always difficult but the pictures reveals something like a Galerina marginata but with the cap cuticle like a Flammulaster or Phaeomarasmius. There are species in both these genera which seems rather close without being rearly convincing.

Pileocystidia

Cheilocystidia

We would much like suggestions—It is unlikely that such a striking species has not been recorded elsewhere by any of you keen mycologists :-)

Engleromyces goetzei - a grotesque member of the Xylariaceae

During a holiday in Uganda July 2011 I encountered (at a distance) one of my most desired fungi: Engleromyces goetzei described by Hennings (1900) from "Nyassa, Africa orientalis" on "culmus emortuos Bambusae". This locality must have been somewhere along lake Nyasa in the southern part of the Great Rift Valley. My sighting was in the same valley but in the mountains near the north west corner of lake Victoria within Uganda but close to the Rwanda border. Despite the original diagnosis refers to a dead bamboo culm, the Ugandan fungus clearly grew on a still living, fairly thick bamboo culm (appr. 5-6 cm diam.). The overall morphology of the fungus does not suggest a placement within the Xylariaceae, but the microscopical characters are rather compelling. I am not aware of any genuine molecular placement of the fungus. Recently a second species of the genus has been described from China, also on bamboo, but apparently a somewhat smaller object (Whalley et al. 2010 - in Mycotaxon).

Lloyd (1917) stated that E.g. is the largest pyrenomycete and that there are several specimens on exhibition in the museum at Berlin. He also wrote "some years later (1906) a specimen reached Paris from the same region. It was sent to the arthropological museum at Paris, the collector taking if for a fossilized skull" and goes on "Patouillard, not knowing of course what Hennings had done at Berlin, renamed it Collemantanginia paradoxa. Practically nothing is known as to its habits. Patouillard states it occurs on the trunk of Abies, Hennings on bamboo".

The fleshy stromata, up to more than 30 cm in diam., contains perithecia in several layers (polystichous) and the spores are likened to those of a Xylaria (dark brown, asymmetrical with one side flattened and somewhat pointy (citriform)). The apical apparatus within the asci stains blue in iodine reagents as in most members of the Xylariaceae. The pictures are taken by one of of my fellow travellers Peter Bundgaard using a long tele lens.

A surprising mass fruiting of Monilinia fructigena

During a general survey for the current Danish basidiomycote atlas a rather unpromising locality in Northern Jutland produced a series of rather interesting records including the subject of this blog.

Under a smallish apple tree (Malus domestica) lots of this years fruits showed signs of Molinia (fructigena) infections and a closer inspection of the soil in the shade of the crown produced many sclerotized apples covered in big, stipitate apothecia, some of which displayed a rather peculiar dark grey brown color.

Under the microscope the colour was shown to be caused by (over-) mature ascospores that made the preparation superficially resemble one of a Hypoxylon species! [sp. ca. 10. x 4.8 µm with some of the pigmented ones clearly bigger; one side flattened and one end slightly more pointy than the other - very close to a Hypoxylon spore without a visible germination apparatus].

The spores match otherwise M. fructigena but at present we cannot exclude M. laxa and M. fructicola. We have so far been unable to locate information on the darkening of the ascospores. The apothecia are ± hairy, even at the apothecial margin, up to 5 mm wide and 10 mm high including the stipe.

[UPDATE: as seen in the comments below, this may not be a Monilinia at all but rather a Lambertella (and if so, the first finding of this genus in Denmark)]

Thomas Læssøe & Jens H. Petersen

Fruitbodies growing on last years sclerotized apples.

From Caroline Hobart we have this announcement of a translation of Stangls book on Inocybe:

It's a translation in English, bigger than the original and thicker with some up to date comments about status of different sp and their occurrence in UK. Index clear and helpful. I have just had my copy and its excellent ....I'm hopeless at German....

Please send a cheque made out to Archie McAdam for £20 + p&p

Address is
Silverdale
Raikeswood Crescent
Skipton
BD23 1ND
01756 793359

Angel's Share Fungus - An Ascomycete Alcoholic

This article appeared in a June issue of WIRED - it describes tracking down a mysterious fungus that causes black staining on a variety of substrates, particularly around breweries, distilleries, and bakeries. Baudoinia compniacensis is the culprit, a heavily melanized anamorphic fungus in the Capnodiales. The fungus uses volatile alcohol as a carbon source. Want to culture it in vitro? Just add a shot of Jack Daniels to the media...