Summary:
Features include tiny, nearly spherical fruitbodies that open to become urceolate, the exterior dark olivaceous brown to blackish and slightly striate, the spore-bearing area grayish, the margin fringed and sometimes paler than the exterior, the stem rudimentary, growth on Spiraea, and microscopic characters.
Collections were examined from BC, WA, ON, PQ, NH, NY, and PA, (Groves).
Upper surface:
apothecia [sexual fruitbodies] 0.05-0.13cm across, 0.05-0.1cm high, at first spherical to nearly spherical, opening circularly and becoming urceolate [goblet-shaped]; spore-bearing surface concave to flat, grayish, softer and more fleshy than the exterior; the margin sometimes paler than the exterior to yellowish olive, more or less fimbriate [fringed], infolded when dry; conidial fruitbodies "erumpent or semi-immersed, separate", 0.02-0.05cm across and about the same high, nearly spherical to ovoid, black, bald, "tearing open widely at the top", containing a nearly spherical to slightly chambered cavity
Flesh:
consistency hard, coriaceous-waxy [leathery-waxy], more coriaceous-fleshy when moist
Underside:
dark olivaceous brown to blackish; slightly striate
Stem:
fruitbody narrowed in lower part, substipitate [with a rudimentary stem]
Microscopic:
spores 20-35(45) x 2.5-3.5(4.0) microns, "elongate-fusiform to subfiliform, occasionally slightly subclavate, straight or slightly curved", pointed at ends, colorless, 3-septate, more or less fasciculate in the ascus; ascus 8-spored, (75)90-110(125) x (5.0)7.0-9.0(10.0) microns, cylindric to cylindric-clavate, tapering in lower part to a slender stem, pore blue with iodine; paraphyses about 1.5-2.0 microns wide, filiform, colorless, septate, simple or branched, "the tips not or very slightly swollen, not forming an epithecium"; conidia 15-25 x 2.0-3.0(4.0) microns, "elongate-fusiform to subfiliform, straight or slightly curved, sometimes sigmoid, pointed at ends", colorless, 1-celled to 4-celled; conidiophores 10-25 x 1.5-2.0 microns, sometimes larger, cylindric-subulate, colorless, septate, branched, "bearing conidia at the tip"
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