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Species Information
Summary: Features include 1) minute fruitbodies on dung with the spore-bearing upper surface convex, pale violet, and dotted with dark violet or blackish tips of asci, 2) exterior that is pale violet and smooth, 3) absent stem, and 4) microscopic characters. Saccobolus versicolor is variable in size, pigmentation, spore size and ornamentation.
It is found at least in OR, ID, CA, and CO, (Larsen). Collections were examined from OR, ID, ON, CA, CO, CT, HI, ME, NJ, NY, TX, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, (Brummelen). There is a collection from BC at the University of British Columbia identified by R. Bandoni in 1960 (as Saccobolus violascens) on elk dung.
Upper surface: (0.01)0.02-0.1(0.2)cm across, at first spherical, then hemispheric, and finally often pulvinate [cushion-shaped] or lens-shaped; disc convex or flat-convex, pale violet, dotted with dark violet or almost black protruding tips of asci; margin not differentiated, (Brummelen)
Underside: pale violet, becoming darker when old; smooth, (Brummelen)
Stem: absent (Brummelen)
Microscopic: spores 13-21.5(23.5) x 6.5-9.5(10) microns, elliptic-fusiform or more rarely fusiform-elliptic, very rarely nearly round or round, "often asymmetrical, subtrigonal or ventricose, with blunt ends", "smooth, finely warted or with small pits and short more or less reticulating fissures", "with common or individual, lateral, mucilaginous substance", at first colorless, then pinkish violet, finally violet, purplish brown or purplish gray, spores clustered; asci 8-spored, (80)100-145 x 22-37 microns, broadly clavate, the wall deep blue in Melzer''s reagent; paraphyses 2-3 microns thick, filiform [thread-like], branched, septate, not, slightly, or strongly enlarged in upper part, up to 7.5 microns wide at tip, colorless, often with amorphous violet intercellular pigment between the upper parts; amorphous intracellular violaceous pigment of variable amount between cells of excipulum, but excipulum may be poorly developed, (Brummelen)
Habitat / Range
scattered or gregarious on dung of cow, caribou, horse, goat, sheep, deer, hare, rabbit, lemming, muskrat, and mouse, also on rotten stems of cabbage and on pasteboard, (Brummelen)
Similar Species
Saccobolus depauperatus is sometimes difficult to distinguish and several fruitbodies of different ages should be examined: S. depauperatus has smaller fruitbodies, asci, and ascospores, and only rarely forms a small amount of intercellular pigment, (Brummelen). Saccobolus glaber Pers.: Fr. was recorded from Washington state by Kanouse, but her description does not fit well with Brummelen''s modern description.
