Microscopic: spores 5-7 x 2.5-3 microns, elliptic, smooth, weakly amyloid; basidia 4-spored, 25-40 x 5-6 microns, slenderly clavate, with basal clamp connection; caulocystidia up to 110 x 5 microns, subulate [awl-shaped], colorless to brownish, thick-walled, multiply septate; hyphae monomitic, 3-7 microns, swollen up to 17 microns, colorless, thin-walled to thick-walled, septa with clamp connections, (Breitenbach), spores 5-9 x 2.5-3.5 microns (7-11 x 3-4 microns according to Donk), oblong, pip-shaped, smooth, white, without droplets; basidia 2-4-spored, 18-30 x 5-7 microns, sterigmata 4-6 microns long; caulocystidia up to 60 microns long, 4-8 microns wide, "conical, apex acute or obtuse, walls thickening, and becoming reddish brown, the tips generally colorless and thin-walled"; hyphae in subhymenium (which is about 30 microns thick) 2-6 microns wide, short-celled, closely interwoven, deeper hyphae 2-20 microns wide, the cells 100-300 microns long, some septa with clamp connections, others without, "with scattered crystals: rather toughly agglutinated in the stem, at the surface narrow, firmly agglutinated and with reddish-brown walls: rather softly agglutinated in the head"; medulla of sclerotium composed of rather closely interwoven, free hyphae 3-10 microns wide with thin or thickened walls, some heavily incrusted with granules, cortex as a single layer of cells, 7-10 microns wide, with wide lumen, "cuticle 1-3 microns thick, red-brown: in surface view with irregularly oblong cells, 10-30 x 5-12 microns, with walls thickened, reddish brown, undulate, with a few peg-like processes into the lumina", (Corner). spores 7-9 x 3-4 microns, elliptic, smooth, amyloid, (Buczacki)
Spore Deposit: white (Buczacki)
Habitat and Range
SIMILAR SPECIES
Typhula phacorrhiza is found in similar habitats but is longer and filiform-cylindric without a distinct club, and is honey-yellow rather than white, (Breitenbach). Typhula sclerotioides is also close, but T. erythropus differs in the red-brown color of the stem and sclerotium, (Corner).
Habitat
on "petioles and veins of the previous year''s fallen leaves of Acer (maple), Alnus (alder), Populus (poplar), and other hardwoods", (Breitenbach), on various dead leaves, sticks, stems, Pteris petioles, (Corner), on petioles of fallen leaves of hardwoods such as Acer macrophylla (Bigleaf Maple), (Trudell), single or in small trooping groups; on dead, fallen and rotting leaves, especially sycamore and ash, also occasionally on dead grass leaves, other herbaceous debris, dead twigs and rotting wood; fall, (Buczacki)