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Species Information
Summary: Features include 1) minute basidiomycete fruiting bodies that are grayish on spore-bearing surface, with whitish marginal hairs and exterior, 2) absent stem, 3) growth on woody herbaceous stems, and on bark and branches of trees and shrubs, and 4) microscopic characters including basidia. In the Cooke and Donk description below, the color of fresh specimens is not clearly separated from the color of dried ones.
Lachnella alboviolascens is found at least in BC, WA, ID, and also ON, AZ, CA, DE, MA, MD, ME, MO, OH, PA, SC, VA, and WI, (Ginns), and the British Isles, Denmark, France, Germany, South Africa, and New Zealand, (Redhead).
Upper surface: 0.05-0.15cm across, "irregularly and shallowly saucer-like"; spore-bearing surface lining cup gray-white, "smooth, often bearing secondary fruit bodies", "margin white, fringed hairy, inrolled", (Buczacki), 0.01-0.015cm x 0.004-0.01cm, margin inrolled, spore-bearing upper surface yellowish or bluish gray to pale violet, (Cooke), "It would seem that the colour of the disk is variable. In most cases it becomes dark at least when drying and in the herbarium the disk is seen as a dark ring shining through the hairy covering in flattened and pressed fruit-bodies. However, more or less luxurious and proliferous fruit-bodies may lack any indication of the purplish colour and the disk may remain pallid, yellowish", (Donk)
Flesh: waxy, soft, fragile; whitish, (Buczacki)
Underside: densely hairy (Buczacki), white to gray, pale bluish or lilaceous gray; with surface hairs, (Cooke)
Stem: absent (Buczacki)
Microscopic: spores 12.5-15 x 10-11 microns, broadly and irregularly elliptic, sometimes flattened on one side, smooth, inamyloid; cystidia absent; hyphal system monomitic; outer hairs "white above, brownish toward base, thick walled, narrowly cylindrical, encrusted, dextrinoid", (Buczacki), spores (10)13.5-15(17) x (6.5)9-11 microns, elliptic, nearly round, or tear-shaped, usually flattened on one side, sometimes pointed at distal end, smooth, colorless; basidia 33-70 x 10-15 microns, 4-spored, sterigmata up to 10 microns long; surface hairs 100-300 x 3-10 microns, densely and finely granule encrusted, tapered, thick-walled, with a very narrow lumen, (Cooke), spores 13.5-15.25 x 9-12 microns, broad-obovoid, adaxially somewhat flattened, with distinct, blunt, eccentric apiculus, contents granular; basidia 2-4-spored, 60-75 x 12-16 microns; hairs about 200 x 5-6 microns, (Donk)
Spore Deposit: white (Buczacki)
Habitat / Range
bark and branches of trees and shrubs, woody herbaceous stems, litter and duff; associated with a white rot, (Ginns), in densely tufted groups; on dead wood, twigs and branches of hardwood trees and shrubs, "herbaceous stems and other plant debris, often on gorse and broom"; spring to fall, (Buczacki for British Isles), densely gregarious to scattered on woody herbaceous stems of plants and on the bark and branches of trees and shrubs, (Cooke)
Similar Species
Donk writes of Lachnella villosa, "The fruit-body is on an average much smaller and more tender than in Lachnella alboviolascens, and closes less perfectly to a globular body. The latter species has a more fleshy disc which almost invariably (at least in not too proliferous fruit-bodies) turns dark. The presence of numerous ''basidioles'' [in L. villosa] may be another important difference. Finally, L. villosa prefers herbaceous or only slightly woody substrata, while L. alboviolascens grows almost invariably on woody substrata (though these may be very thin branches).", (Donk(1), with Latin names in italics), L. villosa usually occurs on herbaceous stems and has a whiter spore-bearing surface, slightly smaller spores, and spear-shaped cystidia, (Buczacki), L. villosa has thinner hymenium.
