Summary:
Sirotrema translucens is tiny, and not likely to be encountered casually, but is of intrinsic interest: the Sirotrema species appear to be intermediate between Sirobasidium (not in western North America) and Tremella. The description is derived from Bandoni(8).
It is found at least in BC and Scotland.
Fruiting body:
0.05-0.12cm wide, occasionally anastomosing and up to 0.3cm long, tuberculate or pulvinate, gelatinous; colorless to grayish colorless or whitish, drying to an inconspicuous colorless or brownish film; the surface is smooth or minutely wrinkled
Microscopic:
ballistospores (forcibly ejected basidiospores) (8.5)9-10(12) x 4.5-6.5 microns, "broadly ovoid or slightly angular and tapering from the midpoint toward both ends, flattened adaxially, rarely slightly curved, with a proportionately large apiculus and a prominent hilar scar", germination by repetition or by budding, blasto-basidiospores produced by some basidia, 6-10 x 2.5-3.5 microns, mostly elongate, subcylindric (almost cylindric), usually tapered proximally, rounded distally, arising either directly from the basidial cells or from the ends of epibasidia of varying lengths; single probasidia 9.5-15(20) x 8.5-13 microns, predominantly spherical or nearly spherical, some obovate, pyriform, fusiform, or clavate, becoming 4-celled, but the partitions often irregularly arranged, epibasidia if present 10-100 x 1.5-2.5 microns, "sometimes swollen to 5 microns apically, often completely lacking and blastospores arising directly from basidial cells"; hymenium "40-90 microns thick, the probasidia borne terminally, often single on the young fertile hyphae, proliferation occurring basally either from the clamp or opposite it, the basidia mostly in dense clusters on older fertile hyphae", "intercalary basidia often present, typically occurring immediately below a terminal basidium, rarely intercalary and single"; hyphae of the basal zone "tightly compacted, difficult to separate, contorted, with infrequent and inconspicuous haustorial branches, the latter often with a pair of tortuous filaments", hyphae of context 1.5-2.5 microns in diameter between clamp connections, the clamp areas usually swollen to 4-5 microns, anastomoses frequent, "branches arising either directly from hyphae or from clamps, the clamps mainly open, sometimes medallion-like", hyphae in subhymenium "with shorter internodes than those in the context, the swollen areas conspicuous, these arising as spherical or subspherical swellings on apices of growing hyphae, the clamp then growing out laterally and posteriorly from the globular terminus"
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