Unknown From the New Forest

[Neil Sanderson]

This seems to be a attractive bark fungus, collected from a young Oak with Micarea pycnidiophora and an isidiate Micarea prasina s. lat. species in old woodland in the New Forest. In macro it looks like a Cryptodiscus species, with erumpent apothecia that are swollen when wet but shrunken and ulcerate when dry, but the internal features do not match.

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Apothecia, damp above, dry below.

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Margin, intact and in squash

The paraphyses are long and unbranched, the spores are about seven septate and 30 – 35 x 8 – 10 µm, while the ascus tips in K/I give a Catillaria-type like structure

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Spores & Asci above in K/I below

Any ideas?

Neil

[JennyS]

Probably a very wild guess but might it be something like Lecanidion atratum?

[Neil Sanderson]

Jenny

Thanks, spores are similar but not carbonaceous and has no K/I reaction on the ascus tip, so not that.

Neil

[Paul Cannon]

The closest I can find is Ramomarthomyces octomerus (see //doi.org/10.3390/jof10050301 – open access), but I’m not too confident. It would be worth sending the images to Jason Karekhian, I think it would interest him…

Paul

[Neil Sanderson]

Paul

Thanks, closer but yes probably not that, his species has branched paraphyses. I will contact him, however, it looks like this fungus is interesting!

Neil

[Paul Cannon]

Keep us in the loop!

I thought I’d seen this before, and have finally dug out some images from Quercus petraea in Bryn Engan, VC49 (SH727575).

[Author]

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