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Species Information
Summary:
Not available
Fruiting body: divided into head and stem, fertile head rounded to flattened, 0.15-0.3cm; ocher to orange-yellow; with fine dark punctation, (Breitenbach), head spherical, commonly about 0.2cm across, cream to purple, dotted with the darker slightly protruding ostioles of the perithecia; sclerotia "elongated, more or less cylindrical with rounded ends but usually with slight longitudinal grooves and ridges", "varying greatly in size and shape according to the species of grass infected", black externally with hard white flesh, (Dennis), spherical head ochraceous brown or pale purple; spotted, (Lincoff)
Stem: 0.5-1.5cm x 0.1-0.15cm, cylindric, sinuous; reddish brown; smooth; "attached by a white hyphal feltwork to the blackish, grooved, often somewhat bent sclerotium", single to a few on a sclerotium, (Breitenbach), slender, cylindric; pale purple; smooth, (Dennis), long, thin; colored as head; smooth, (Lincoff)
Microscopic: spores 100-120 x 1 microns, filiform [thread-like], smooth, colorless, multiply septate when mature; asci 8-spored, 160 x 5 microns, with parallel spores, inamyloid; paraphyses absent, (Breitenbach), spores thread-like, about 100 x 1 microns, parallel in ascus, becoming septate after expulsion; asci very long, about 5 microns wide, narrowly cylindric, apex thick-walled with central pore, (Dennis)
Habitat / Range
on damp sclerotia that formed the previous year in the panicles of various grasses, (Breitenbach), singly or in small clusters on fallen sclerotia, (Dennis)
Similar Species
Claviceps grohii J.W. Groves, whose sclerotia have been found on Carex (sedge) in BC and PQ, produces clubs in laboratory culture with stems up to 1.5cm long and heads up to 0.2cm in diameter, the sclerotium 0.5-1.5cm x 0.1-0.3cm, blackish violet, curved or nearly straight, and usually more or less flattened on one side, (Groves).
