Arrhenia retiruga (Bull.: Fr.) Redhead
no common name
Uncertain

Species account author: Ian Gibson.
Extracted from Matchmaker: Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest.

Introduction to the Macrofungi

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Map

E-Flora BC Static Map

Distribution of Arrhenia retiruga
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Species Information

Summary:
Also listed in Veined category. Features include small size, lobes of various forms attached eccentrically or sometimes radially symmetric and cup-shaped attached centrally, grayish white to buff to grayish brown color, spore bearing surface smooth or with anastomosing veins, and growth on moss.
Cap:
0.1-1cm across, "cyphelloid and radially symmetric or more often eccentrically fixed and bilaterally symmetric, mostly pendant", sometimes deeply cup-shaped to bell-shaped but more often shallowly formed, "when on robust mosses such as Polytrichum, quite often slightly ascending and reflexed", nearly approaching a stemmed form but always with the spore-bearing surface delimited by a sterile margin, the margin incurved, usually becoming crisped and uneven when old; "grayish-white to isabelline" (Overholts 1940) or brownish gray (Reid 1963), to buff; moist to dry, smooth to rugose [wrinkled] in large specimens, (Redhead), 0.5-1cm across, when old still like inverted bowl ("cyphella-like"), almost round, suspended at crown from various mosses; gray-whitish, (Moser), grayish white to grayish brown, fading quickly on drying, (Trudell)
Flesh:
thin, delicate, or more fleshy; colored as cap, (Redhead)
Gills:
spore-bearing surface "smooth initially, often becoming only slightly rugose, usually more developed eccentrically, either with more or less radially disposed branched and forked veins with frequent anastomoses and sinose intervenose branches, or more elaborately reticulate-poroid with less development in the marginal areas"; colored as cap or slightly paler, (Redhead), darker, veined-netted (Moser)
Stem:
"The basal mycelium usually only a small weft but in more robust ascending forms sometimes sheathing moss leaves and stems in a tight bundle resembling a pseudostipe", (Redhead)
Odor:
not distinctive (Watling)
Taste:
not distinctive (Watling)
Microscopic spores:
spores 6-9(11) x 3.2-5 microns, mostly short and cylindric to elliptic but varying to broadly elliptic or oboval, smooth, inamyloid, thin-walled, apiculus prominent; basidia 4-spored, 18-28 x 6-8.5 microns, clavate, simple septate, (Redhead), spores almost rounded, to 10 microns, (Moser), basidia 2- or 4-spored, 20-35 x 6-7.5(9) microns, clavate, colorless with slightly pigmented base; pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia absent; clamp connections absent, (Watling)
Spore deposit:
white (Watling)
Notes:
Collections were examined from BC, WA, OR, ID, ON, CA, MI, MT, NC, NY, PA, TN, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, USSR, and Tunisia, (Redhead).
EDIBILITY

Habitat and Range

SIMILAR SPECIES
Arrhenia spathulata has been reported from BC (Oluna Ceska, multiple collections at the University of British Columbia) and MT (Michelle Seidl, collection at the University of Washington). It has a more or less upright stem. Arrhenia lobata has clamp connections. See also SIMILAR section of Muscinupta laevis.
Habitat
on mosses, tree trunks, sometimes on twigs or leaves near mosses (Redhead), fall, spring, (Buczacki)

Synonyms

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Leptoglossum retirugum (Bull.) Ricken
Suillus imitatus A.H. Sm. & Thiers