Part 62

Fruit-body: diameter 20-40 mm × 20-60 mm.

Description:

Fruit-body: date-brown at first finally black or dark brownish black, tough, minutely pimply over entire surface although at first covered in a powdery dust of asexual spores (conidia).

Stem: lacking.

Flesh: pale grey or buff, concentrically zoned with darker purplish black layers below which are small, black dots.

Spores: very long, black, ellipsoid with one flattened side and 12-17 × 6-9 µm in size; eight contained in an elongate cylindrical ascus.

Habitat & Distribution: Common on old deciduous wood, particularly of ash and beech.

General Information: These two fungi are unrelated; the first is related to the disc-fungi, like species of Peziza, whilst Daldinia is related to the Dead man’s finger fungus. Rhizina undulata has been shown to be able to attack roots of pine or larch trees and cause death. Daldinia is a pure saprophyte rotting down wood into more simple compounds later to be incorporated into the soil-system. The common name ‘Cramp-balls’ refers to the old belief that if one of the fruit-bodies is carried in the pocket it saves the possessor from cramp and rheumatism. The other common name for the same fungus is ‘King Alfred’s cakes’. The black colour of the fruit-body is like that of charred cakes--resembling the cakes in the legend which King Alfred allowed to burn.

Illustrations: R. undulata--LH 37; NB 111⁶. D. concentrica--F 7^{b}; LH 47; NB 147⁷.

~Xylosphaera polymorpha~ (Mérat) Dumortier

Dead man’s fingers

Fruit-body: width 10-20 mm; length 30-60 mm.

Description:

Fruit-body: more or less club-shaped, irregularly or evenly lobed at apex, at first light brown due to development of asexually produced spores (conidia) but finally almost black.

Stem: black and short.

Flesh: white, fibrous and tough.

Crust: black, thin, pimply with the protruding tips of the perithecia, and sometimes irregularly furrowed.

Spores: very long, fusiform with one flattened side, black and 20-32 × 5-9 µm in size; eight contained in an elongate cylindrical ascus.

Habitat & Distribution: Common either solitary or in clusters on dead stumps or on buried wood, especially that of beech. This fungus may be found throughout the year.

~Xylosphaera hypoxylon~ Dumortier

Stag’s horn fungus

Fruit-body: width 4-8 mm; length 25-60 mm.

Description: Plate 69.

Fruit-body: slender, subcylindrical to strap-shaped and usually forked repeatedly near the tip, white at first due to production of conidia and then black or dark brown and covered in pimples.

Stem: black and hairy.

Spores: very long, bean-shaped, black and 11-14 × 5-6 µm in size; eight in an elongate ascus.

General Information: Another name for X. hypoxylon is ‘Candle-snuff fungus’. Other club-shaped ascomycetes include members of the genus Geoglossum (already mentioned p. 172) and members of the genus Cordyceps. Plate 69.

~Cordyceps militaris~ (St Amans) Link, the ‘Scarlet caterpillar fungus’, produces orange-red or orange, minutely roughened fruit-bodies up to 50 mm high, which grow on larvae and pupae of moths buried in the soil. It is not infrequent late in the autumn in pasture land.