Summary:
Features include 1) a spherical to slightly flattened or depressed fruiting body often imbedded in white rhizomorphs, the rough outer surface whitish to grayish, often developing buff, pinkish, vinaceous, or brownish tints when old, 2) a peridium with a thin outer separable mycelial part and a thicker (0.3-0.5cm) inner part that is microscopically multilayered, 3) a spore mass that is white and soft, becoming sticky and blackish with a radial pattern, and finally black-powdery, 4) a conspicuous rounded columella in the middle of the spore mass, 5) clustered growth in soil or duff in woods (especially along roads in woods), and 6) microscopic characters including elliptic spores 5.6-7 x 4.2-5.5 microns, filiform 6-8-spored basidia, and specific peridial and glebal structures. Schenella simplex was originally thought to be a slime mold, but the name received priority when Radiigera atrogleba, described as a truffle, was later found to be the same species. In Schenella, dispersal by animals eating the fungus is supplemented by the development of spore-containing peridioles (radial sections of the spore mass) coated with a sticky substance, and in at least one species of the genus this enables parts of the spore mass to stick to the animal. It is abundant among false truffles in the Pacific Northwest (Trappe(13)).

Interior:
"white, fleshy, and rather soft at first, becoming gooey or inky and blackish, and eventually powdery (and blackish)", (Arora), black at maturity, capillitium attached between peridium and columella, radial pattern apparent, (Dominguez)

Odor:
often rather unpleasant in the inky stage (Arora), metallic, resembling that of actual ink, (Smith(15) quoting Gruber)

Microscopic:
spores 5.5-6.5 microns, round, minutely warted, deep brown under microscope; interior "composed of plate-like bundles of hyphae which radiate from the columella to the peridium", (Arora), spores 5.6-7.0 x 4.2-5.5 microns, elliptic to rarely round in front and side view, round in polar view, finely verrucose, basal scar present, with apiculus; basidia 6-8-spored, to 28 x 1.5-2.5 microns, tubulose to filiform, with epibasidial part bearing short sterigmata (1 micron); gleba with long radiating locules when immature that form well-developed to poorly developed peridioles (radial sections containing spores and capillitial threads) at maturity; trama plate hyphae up to 1.5-2 microns wide, thin-walled; capillitium shiny, dark reddish brown, smooth, up to 7 microns diameter, attached to peridium and columella, persisting as tubes at maturity; columella of hyphae 2-5 microns wide, interwoven, colorless, "thin-walled, septate, clamped"; peridium 2-layered, to 4200 microns thick, a thin mycelial layer and a pseudoparenchymal layer, itself with 2 intergrading strata (and the thin outermost stratum itself with 2 zones): 1) the mycelial outer layer of the peridium is 175-200 microns thick, composed of hyphae 0.5-1 microns wide, entangled, flexuous [wavy], nonseptate, nonbranching, colorless, intermingled with soil debris, 2) the outer pseudoparenchymatous stratum is 42-100 microns thick, with an outer zone plectenchymatic lacking structure at maturity and inner zone of hyphae 2-4 microns wide, colorless, thin-walled, clamped, not reacting with cotton blue in lactic acid, and intermingled with conductive hyphae that are 2 microns wide, and react positively with cotton blue in lactic acid, the inner pseudoparenchymatous stratum is 2000-4200 microns thick, composed of thin-walled, colorless, inflated cells up to 60 microns in diameter, near the gleba the cells compressed and appearing almost flat, (a third stratum also sometimes present, "dark brown, undifferentiated, to 15 microns thick near the peridium, with attached capillitial threads"), (Dominguez), basidia 4-many spored (Smith(15) quoting Zeller)

Notes:
Schenella simplex is found from BC to northern CA, ID, and CO, (Trappe(13)). Collections were examined from BC, WA, OR, ID, CA, CO, and UT, and it is also known from MT and Mexico, (Dominguez).

EDIBILITY

unknown (Arora), not edible (Smith(15))

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Lachnum niveum "(Hedw.: Fr.) P. Karst.,"