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Species Information
Summary: Also listed in Clubs category. Fruitbodies are single or densely grouped soft wax-like white hanging spines up to 0.6cm long, growing on conifer wood or old polypores. Corner(3) considered Mucronella alba Lloyd a synonym of Mucronella bresadolae, but note the difference in spore size from the European description of Breitenbach(2). The online Species Fungorum, accessed February 17, 2012, listed Mucronella alba Lloyd as a synonym of Mucronella pendula, as does Petersen(28). Mucronella alba could be regarded as an ambiguous name, but Siegel(2) use this name Mucronella alba for what has been called Mucronella bresadolae in the Pacific Northwest.
Mucronella ''bresadolae'' is found at least in BC, Austria, France, and Morocco, (Corner(3)), and Switzerland (Breitenbach). Corner''s listing for BC appears to refer to R. Bandoni 116 (1958) at the University of British Columbia where it is still labeled Mucronella alba, but there are two other later UBC collections from BC labeled M. bresadolae, one of them by R. Bandoni 12743A (2000). Desjardin(6) illustrates it for CA.
Cap: fruitbody consisting of single or densely grouped subulate [awl-shaped] spines 0.1-0.5cm long and 0.02-0.06cm wide, which grow toward the ground, (the fruitbodies are the teeth, but when grouped, there is sometimes a weakly developed whitish sterile wax-like subiculum), (Breitenbach), spines up to 0.6cm long and 0.04-0.08cm wide, or merely 0.01-0.03cm wide, unbranched, more or less fasciculate (bundled) with a thin, whitish, sterile subiculum, hanging, filiform (somewhat thread-like), acute, then fusiform [spindle-shaped], waxy fragile, no stem; white or cream, in places yellowish, (Corner(3))
Teeth: smooth and often somewhat curved, ending in a sharp, conic, sterile point; white, sometimes yellowish at base, (Breitenbach)
Microscopic: spores 5.5-6 x 4-6 microns (one collection 7-7.5 x 5.5-7 microns), nearly round, colorless, inamyloid, without droplets; basidia 4-spored, 25-35 x 4.5-6 microns, slenderly clavate; cystidia-like cells between the basidia, 25-35 x 3-4 microns, smooth and some of them sinuous; hyphae monomitic with scattered crystals, hyphae 3-14 microns wide, most septa with clamp connections, (Breitenbach), spores 5-8.5 x 4.5-6.3 microns, nearly round, tear-shaped, or short elliptic, pale blue amyloid; basidia 4-spored, 25-40 x 5.5-8.5 microns, sterigmata 5 microns long; cystidia frequent, sparse, or absent, 25-45 x 3-4 microns, "as narrow sterile basidia immersed or projecting -20 microns"; hymenium not thickening; hyphae 2.5-11 microns wide, thin-walled or slightly thick-walled at the base of the fruiting body, the cells up to 250 microns long, not secondarily septate, clamped, in some collections with abundant tetrahedral crystals up to 10 microns long, (Corner(3))
Habitat / Range
on rotten wood and bark (?always coniferous), (Corner(3)), on very rotten wood or old polypores, (Breitenbach)
Similar Species
Mucronella calva has shorter spines, shorter and narrower spores, and smaller basidia, (Breitenbach). Protohydnum piceicola is a macroscopically similar jelly fungus (see Crust category), (Roberts(3)).
