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I’ve just keyed out a discomycete on dead fennel stems using Fungi of Switzerland vol 2. It keyed easily to Dasyscyphus mollissimum – now in Lachnum? The original descriptions for this fungus only describe white hairs. At maturity the hairs were bright yellow as described in FoS vol 2.
Can anyone advise whether it’s ok to record this? Or do I still have some sorting out to do?
Not a group that I know all that well, but I think the latest placement is in Trichopeziza – see http://fungi.myspecies.info/all-fungi/trichopeziza-mollissima There does seem to be variation in the amount of yellow pigment around the hairs, but I think the yellow morphs predominate. There is another species that is similar externally – T. sulphurea – but this has much larger multiseptate ascospores.
Best wishes
Paul
Hi, I have determined the white ones as T. mollisima and the yellow ones like those in the photo as Trichopeziza leucophaea, because of the definitions in Nordic macromycetes 1. The yellow ones on Urtice are usually T. sulphurea. I have noticed, that some define T. leucophaea as T. mollisima, so there seems to be a misinterpretation in in NM1 or elsewhere…
Marja
I’ve dug around the history of this a bit – the synonymy of Trichopeziza mollissima and T. leucophaea seems to originate in Dennis (1960) – the first edition of his ascomycete book. It does seem curious that two taxa with such different phenotype were combined by such an illustrious discomycetologist, and it’s surprising that there isn’t a modern monograph of the group. Things may be more complex than we realize – there’s an image in Zotto Baral’s superb online image library of what appears to be a mixed collection of the two… Thanks for looking into this Paul. My material all had white hairs early in development. Later the hairs close to the edge of the disc remained mainly white while a yellow blush, that deepened to a definite yellow, developed on the majority of the hairs. There was never the vivid bold yellow in many of the available photos online, though.
Perhaps that’s why synonymy was considered so early on in the history of these names.
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