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Species Information
Summary: Sarcoscypha coccinea is a bright red cup with whitish downy to granular exterior, and usually a white stem connecting it to fallen or buried hardwood sticks and branches.
It is found at least in BC, WA, OR, and CA (Larsen). It is limited in North America to west of the Rocky Mountains, but common in Europe, (Harrington), including Switzerland (Breitenbach), United Kingdom (Dennis), Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, (Hansen).
Upper surface: 2-5(6)cm wide, cup-shaped usually with incurved margin; bright red to scarlet, sometimes fading to reddish orange; smooth, (Arora), 1-5(8)cm, goblet-shaped then cup-shaped to saucer-shaped, circular to oval in outline from above, "margin remaining turned inward for a long time"; bright red, (Breitenbach)
Flesh: thin but not particularly brittle (Arora)
Underside: whitish, covered with minute hairs, (Arora), pink to ocher, with whitish granular flakes, (Breitenbach), white, floccose with more or less matted colorless hairs, (Dennis)
Stem: absent or more often present, up to 4cm long and 0.3-0.7cm wide, narrowing downward; white; minutely hairy, (Arora), stem short to sometimes very long (on deeply buried wood), (Breitenbach)
Odor: none in particular (Lincoff(1))
Taste: none in particular (Lincoff(1))
Microscopic: spores 24-40 x 10-14 microns, elliptic, smooth, (Arora), spores 29-39 x 9-11(13) microns, elliptic, smooth, colorless, usually with many small droplets in both ends, 1-seriate; asci 8-spored, 398-450 x (11.5)13.5 - 15(17) microns, inamyloid; paraphyses thin, cylindric, sparsely septate, with red granular contents that turn green in iodine, (Breitenbach), spores 24-32(40) x 12-14 microns, elliptic-cylindric with obtuse ends, usually with small oil droplets in two clusters, one at each end; asci to 400 x 16 microns; paraphyses slender, 3 microns wide, not enlarged near tip, forking near base, with red granular contents, (Dennis)
Habitat / Range
single or in groups on buried or fallen hardwood sticks or branches, winter and early spring, (Arora), singly to gregariously on branches of hardwood trees covered with earth or moss, February to May, (Breitenbach for Europe), hardwood twigs and branchlets that have started to decompose and are partly buried within the top 5cm of soil and forest litter, (Harrington)
Similar Species
Prior to 1984 all of the large specimens of Sarcoscypha in North America were identified as Sarcoscypha coccinea but two other species have been recognized, Sarcoscypha dudleyi (Peck) Baral and Sarcoscypha austriaca (Beck ex Sacc.) Boud. These two are not known to occur in the Pacific Northwest, nor is the smaller (0.5-2cm) Sarcoscypha occidentalis (Schw.) Sacc. which fruits in the summer months, (Harrington). Pseudaleuria quinaultiana is more or less disc-shaped typically, is more reddish orange than red, and lacks a stem.
