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Species Information
Summary: Features include tiny black blackberry-like fruitbodies on wood, often seen in small to large clusters. Bertia moriformis var. latispora is characterized by its broader (6-8.5 microns) and geniculate mature spores compared to the narrower (4.5-6.5 microns) and straight to gently curved mature spores of var. moriformis. Approximately half of the Canadian collections examined and about one third of the US collections examined were variety latispora, but only two of the 13 collections from the Pacific Northwest (BC) and only 3 of over 40 European collections.
Collections of var. moriformis were examined from BC, WA, ID, AB, NB, ON, QC, CA, CO, CT, IN, MA, MD, ME, NH, NY, OH, PA, VT, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom; collections of var. latispora were examined from BC, NB, ON, QC, CO, MI, NC, NH, NY, VA, and Switzerland, (Corlett). F. Rhoades photographed var. moriformis in OR and Kauffman(5) also reported Bertia moriformis from OR.
Fruiting body: 0.05-0.07cm across, 0.07-0.1(0.12)cm high (including base), upper fertile part spherical to almost spherical, with coarse tubercles over surface, resting on a well-developed, short-cylindric, non-tuberculate base, (Corlett), 0.04-0.06cm across, spherical to ovoid, "usually somewhat taller than wide", "similar to a tiny blackberry or mulberry"; black, resting on wood without subiculum, (Breitenbach)
Microscopic: mature spores 34.5-52.5 x 4.5-6.5 microns (compared with 30-49 x 6-8.5(10.5) microns in var. latispora), "straight to curved, ends rounded to acute", 1(3)-septate, smooth, with droplets, irregularly arranged in upper part of ascus, (mature spores best measured after release from ascus into central cavity of fruitbody); asci 8-spored, 92-140 x 10-21 microns including stalk, clavate, long-stalked, thin-walled, deliquescing early and releasing spores into the central cavity of the fruiting body; wall of fruitbody at top and sides irregular in thickness due to the tubercles, ostiole as such not recognized externally but in longitudinal section seen as an apical thinning of the fruitbody wall, (Corlett), spores 40 x 5.5-6 microns, "fusiform-allantoid or sinuous, smooth", colorless, "with 1 septum in the center, with a few droplets"; asci 8-spored, 150-160 x 10-17 microns, iodine negative, 2-seriate; paraphyses "filiform, septate", (Breitenbach)
Habitat / Range
scattered to gregarious, superficial on barkless sound or, occasionally, on partially rotted wood and dead branches of living trees and shrubs, "infrequently erumpent through attached bark of dead wood", mostly on hardwood, occasionally on coniferous wood or old basidiocarps (Coriolus, Hirschioporus); var. latispora on barkless sound wood, occasionally partially rotted wood and dead branches of living trees, mostly on conifer wood, occasionally on hardwood or on old basidiocarps (Hymenochaete), (Corlett), cespitose or growing in irregularly dense groups on small barkless hardwood branches lying on the ground, rarely on conifers; all year, (Breitenbach)
