Summary: Features include small, yellow fruitbodies that are scurfy on the exterior, short or inconspicuous stem, growth on dung, and microscopic characters including spores that become violet to brownish, ornamented by longitudinal lighter lines.
Microscopic: spores 17-22 x 9.5-12 microns, elliptic, "ornamented with more or less longitudinal or oblique, rather widely spread, rarely anastomosing lines", with unilateral mucilaginous substance, at first colorless then pale or dark violet, finally sometimes brownish, uniseriate at first, finally biseriate; asci 8-spored, 180-280 x 22-26 microns, clavate-cylindric, gradually narrowing downwards, rounded at top, walls amyloid; paraphyses 2.2-3.5(7) microns wide, cylindric or clavate, "enlarged, narrowed or forked above, at the apex 1.5-12 microns thick", simple or branched, septate, colorless, embedded in abundant greenish-yellow mucus, (Brummelen)
Notes: Ascobolus michaudii is found at least in BC (Larsen). Collections were examined from ON, Czechoslovakia, France, Netherlands, and Poland, (Brummelen).
Habitat and Range
SIMILAR SPECIES
Ascobolus crenulatus has a yellowish green spore-bearing surface and smaller spores, (Hansen).
Habitat
gregarious or scattered on dung of cow, horse, and rabbit, (Brummelen)