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Species Information
Summary: Also listed in Cups category. Ascocoryne cylichnium is not normally considered with Jelly fungi (it is an ascomycete). Features include 1) a top-shaped to disc-shaped or cup-shaped fruitbody that is purple to pink and gelatinous, 2) stem lacking or short, 3) tightly clustered growth on wood, and 4) microscopic characters including ascospores 18-30 microns long that are multiseptate. Breitenbach(1) say it can be separated from Ascocoryne sarcoides only by the spore size, and gives the same macroscopic description for both species, word for word.
Phillips says "Common. Found in the Pacific Northwest and probably other areas." It is also found in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, (Hansen), and Switzerland, (Breitenbach). There are collections from BC at the University of British Columbia.
Fruiting body: 0.5-1(2)cm across, spherical when young then turbinate [top-shaped] to cup-shaped or disc-shaped, or cushion-like with central depression, usually irregularly undulating, spore-bearing surface flesh-pink to violet-pink, smooth to somewhat wrinkled when mature; exterior the same color and smooth; flesh gelatinous; stemless or with very short stem, (Breitenbach), up to 2cm wide, "lobed or irregularly cup-shaped with a flattened or concave disc; dark reddish brown or purplish brown; moist, slimy, minutely scurfy"; stem none or very short, (Phillips), 0.6-3cm, disc-shaped to turbinate [top-shaped], purplish, (Hansen)
Microscopic: spores 20-24 x 5.5-6 microns, elliptic, smooth, colorless, with several septa when ripe, often with small secondary spores, with droplets when young; asci 8-spored, 209-220 x 10-12, biseriate, amyloid; paraphyses filiform [thread-like], tips with clavate thickening up to 4 microns, (Breitenbach), spores 18-30 x 4-6 microns, becoming multiseptate and budding off spherical secondary spores while still in the ascus, (Dennis), spores 18-30 x 4-6 microns, fusoid [spindle-shaped], "multiseptate and bud off secondary spores while still in the ascus"; ascus 200-220 x 10-12 microns, (Phillips), spores 18-33 x 4-6 microns, narrowly elliptic, multiseptate, often developing small globose conidia already in the ascus, (Hansen)
Habitat / Range
usually in tight clusters, forming a surface sometimes as large as a hand, rarely single; on rotting branches and trunks of trees on ground, as well as stumps, (Breitenbach) "clustered on stumps and fallen logs", (Phillips), on old stumps, often among mosses, (Hansen)
Similar Species
Ascocoryne sarcoides has smaller spores 10-19 x 3-5 microns and according to Dennis often has smaller fruiting bodies. See also SIMILAR section of Ascocoryne striata.
