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Species Information
Summary: Pseudoplectania melaena is a dark brown to blackish cup sparingly clothed with straight or slightly flexuous [wavy] hairs, with a stem of variable length up to 3cm, growing on wood under conifers, and with microscopic characters including smooth, round spores and paraphyses that are hooked or coiled at the tips. This taxon has also been known in North America as Pseudoplectania vogesiaca (Pers.) Seaver, but Van Vooren(1) make a strong case for the name we are using. Carbone(1) gives molecular evidence for the separation of Pseudoplectania (including Pseudoplectania melaena) from Plectania. The online Species Fungorum and MycoBank, accessed March 18, 2018, gave Pseudoplectania melaena as a synonym of Plectania melaena (Fr.) Paden, in Korf, Mycotaxon 14(1): 1 (1982), and Pseudoplectania vogesiaca is listed separately, but it is not clear why the two are separately listed or why Pseudoplectania melaena has reverted to Plectania.
Pseudoplectania melaena is found at least in BC, WA, OR, and ID, (Larsen), VT to WA, and Europe, (Seaver), Switzerland (Breitenbach), and Sweden (Hansen).
Upper surface: 2-4(8)cm, cup-shaped to saucer-shaped, margin remaining incurved for a long time; spore-bearing upper surface dark olive-brown to black-brown, (Breitenbach), reaching 2-3cm across and 1-2cm deep, cup-shaped or occasionally nearly flat, margin often wavy; upper surface concave or nearly flat, dark olivaceous brown, (Seaver), cup usually rather shallow, medium to deep olivaceous brown at first, when old the entire cup becomes black, (Trudell), yellow-brown to olive-brown when young but blackens when old (Arora)
Underside: darker than upper surface to black and slightly felty with black appressed hairs, (Breitenbach), black or blackish; very sparingly tomentose, becoming strongly wrinkled when dry, (Seaver)
Stem: "resting on the wood with a +/- long stalk", (Breitenbach), "stem very variable in length but occasionally reaching 2-3cm" and about 0.3cm wide, black, attached at base by dense mass of coarse, dark brown hairs, (Seaver), usually present but never as long as in Donadinia nigrella, (Trudell)
Microscopic: spores 10-12 microns in diameter, round, smooth, colorless, with 1 large droplet; asci 8-spored, 320 x 13 microns, negative reaction to iodine; paraphyses filiform [thread-like], "with few septa, tips simple to spirally curved and some of them forked", up to 3 microns wide, with dark contents; hairs up to 120 x 7 microns, cylindric, black-brown, "smooth, with few septa, thin-walled, tips blunt, some cells widened and bulging, base with bristle-like outgrowths", (Breitenbach), spores reaching 12-14 microns in diameter, round, smooth, becoming very pale brown, containing 1 large oil droplet, uniseriate; asci reaching a length of 200-275 microns and a width of 16-18 microns, cylindric in upper part, with very long stem-like base; paraphyses slender, slightly widened in upper part and coiled or hooked at tips, reaching width of 3-4 microns; tomentum "consisting of short, brown, flexuous [wavy], sparingly septate hairs", (Seaver), spores 10-17 microns, round, smooth, with one large oil droplet, (Trudell)
Habitat / Range
single to gregarious on "rotting trunks and branches of Abies alba (silver fir) which lie on the ground, also on buried wood", March to May, (Breitenbach), gregarious or scattered, on decaying wood in coniferous woods, especially among Sphagnum, (Seaver), "on twigs and other woody debris, usually of conifers", late winter or early spring, (Trudell)
Similar Species
Pseudoplectania nigrella has no stem, and paraphyses do not have spirally curved ends, (Breitenbach). P. nigrella has a short stem or no stem, and is densely clothed with coiled hairs, whereas P. melaena has a long stem, and is sparingly clothed with straight or slightly flexuous [wavy] hairs, (Seaver). P. nigrella also averages smaller. Plectania species have elliptic spores: Plectania melastoma and Plectania milleri have no distinct stem, Plectania melastoma usually has orange granules on the margin, and Donadinia nigrella always has distinct stem that is always longer than that of Pseudoplectania melaena and usually fruits near melting snowbanks.
