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Species Information
Summary: Features include bright orange to vermilion, cup-shaped, stemless fruitbody with short downy brown hairs on the margin, growth on the ground, and microscopic characters including spores with a coarse network of ornamentation and some with a thorny outgrowth at each end.
Melastiza chateri is found in BC, WA, OR, ID, and also AB and CO, (Larsen); eastern North America, west to CO, ID, and AK, (Beug).
Upper surface: up to 1.5cm wide, exceptionally larger, cup-shaped then expanding; bright orange to vermilion, (Dennis), 0.5-1.5cm, hemispheric then conic to saucer-shaped, irregularly wavy when mature; bright red-orange to vermilion, margin colored brownish by small tufts of brown hyphae, (Breitenbach)
Underside: paler than upper surface, dotted toward the margin by minute bunches of downy, brown hairs, (Dennis), colored as upper surface, (Breitenbach)
Stem: none (Dennis, Breitenbach)
Microscopic: spores 17-19 x 9-11 microns, elliptic but with a coarse raised reticulum that often has a spine-like projection at each end of the spore; asci up to 300 x 15 microns; paraphyses clavate, up to 10 microns wide at tip, which is filled with orange granules, (Dennis), spores 17-19.5 x 9-10 microns (not including ornamentation), ornaments projecting up to 4 microns, elliptic, "with coarse network of ridges, some also with apical thorny outgrowths, sometimes with small droplets on the spore ends"; asci 8-spored, to 300 x 15 microns, inamyloid; paraphyses "cylindrical, tips with clavate thickenings to 7 microns"; hairs to 200 x 14-16.5 microns, brownish, smooth, with 2-5 septa, more or less cylindric, ending in blunt tip, (Breitenbach)
Habitat / Range
on bare or mossy soil, (McKnight), on damp sandy soils, October to March, (Dennis for UK), growing "singly, gregariously to clumped together", "along the edges of paths and roads, in forests and on grassy herb-covered spots, on bare sandy or loamy ground, May to September", (Breitenbach for Switzerland)
Similar Species
Scutellinia species are generally smaller, have longer hairs with a different structure, and have different spores. Under a hand lens, the hairs of Scutellinia scutellata are stiff, brown, and bristle-like, whereas the hairs of M. chateri can be seen as soft, shorter, brown, and matted together, giving a streaky rather than spiny appearance, (McKnight).
Dennis(1), Breitenbach(1)*, Seaver(2) (as M. charteri), Kanouse(6) (as M. charteri), Larsen(1), Phillips(1)*, Schalkwijk-Barendsen(1)*, Courtecuisse(1)*, McKnight(1)*, Beug(3)* References for the fungi
