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Species Information
Summary: Features include minute yellowish gray fruitbodies in colonies on wood, the exterior with hairs, and microscopic characters including basidia. Dictionary of the Fungi Ninth Edition synonymizes Cyphellopsis with Merismodes. According to the online Species Fungorum, accessed December 15, 2013, this taxon is a synonym of Merismodes fasciculata (Schwein.) Donk.
Cyphellopsis confusa (Bres.) D.A. Reid is found at least in BC according to Redhead(21), who however says, "The specimens assigned to this species are somewhat at variance with those that Reid examined and may represent a distinct taxon.". There are collections from BC at University of British Columbia. C. confusa is found in MI and Europe, (Reid).
Upper surface: up to 0.03cm across and up to 0.04cm high (when examined in KOH), turbinate [top-shaped], the fruitbody appears yellowish-gray, and distinctly villose-tomentose under a lens, when dried the margin rolls in to cover the spore-bearing area, (Reid)
Underside: when young appears grayish white due to covering of granule-encrusted hairs, old fruitbodies "have a browner appearance and fully mature fruitbodies become snuffbrown in colour", (Reid)
Stem: narrows in lower part into stem-like base up to 0.02cm long and 0.01cm wide, (Reid)
Microscopic: spores (5.5)7-8.2 x 2-2.2 microns, narrowly elliptic or subcylindric to slightly allantoid, colorless, thin-walled; basidia 4-spored, up to 27 microns wide and 5.5 microns wide, narrowly clavate, with basal clamp connection; cystidia and gloeocystidia absent; the hyphae of the stem-like base are 2(3) microns wide and densely compacted, and diverge to form the tissue of the cup; subiculum 200 microns thick, consisting of erect hyphae 2.5 microns wide: these hyphae, "which are identical with the surface hairs of the fruitbody, have thickened brown walls, but retain a narrow lumen with occasional indistinct secondary septa", they are long, up to 200 microns, and also have long, colorless, often flexuous [wavy] tips; the hairs, which are also elongated, arise from vegetative hyphae to which they are joined by a clamp connection, they have thickened brown walls, and long, thin-walled, colorless, granule-encrusted tips, and are secondarily septate, the encrustation very fine, amorphous, and soluble in KOH, tips of hairs mostly bluntly rounded but sometimes variously inflated (capitate or clavate, in the latter case the clavate part sometimes constricted by a septum), the inflated part being thin-walled and colorless or occasionally thick-walled and brown, (Reid), spores ranging up to 7-10 x 2-3.5 microns, (Redhead)
Habitat / Range
densely crowded in cushion-shaped colonies 0.15-0.35cm across, "the colonies often consisting of well over 50 fruiting bodies", (Reid), in colonies like those of Merismodes anomala, having areas up to 2cm x 5cm; on barkless wood, Populus in one collection and hardwood in the other, (Redhead for BC)
Similar Species
Merismodes fasciculata is similar especially if the spiral coiling of hairs in Merismodes fasciculata is poorly developed, but then it is most readily distinguished by the manner in which the spore-bearing surface of Merismodes fasciculata lines a deep cavity extending almost to the base of the fruitbody, (Reid). Merismodes anomala has spores 8-9.5 x 3.7-4.5(5) microns according to Breitenbach(2).
