Details about map content are available here Click on the map dots to view record details.
Species Information
Summary: Sphagnurus paluster is characterized by parasitism on Sphagnum. (According to Smith(15) it kills Sphagnum in distinct areas around it where moss becomes gray; fruiting bodies often occur close to the living moss.) Other features include a hygrophanous, grooved cap that is gray to dark umber brown, at first with a whitish bloom, unchanging flesh, whitish to grayish gills, a fragile stem paler than the cap and pruinose when young, a rancid-farinaceous odor, and elongate elliptic, smooth, inamyloid spores. The online Species Fungorum, accessed February 9, 2016, gave the current name as Sphagnurus paluster (Peck) Redhead & V. Hofst. but MycoBank gave Lyophyllum palustre (Peck) Singer as the current name on the same date.
Smith says it is "to be expected wherever sphagnum bogs are found in our northern temperate regions". Breitenbach (3) give the distribution as North America, Europe, and Asia. A collection by Paul Kroeger from BC is at the University of British Columbia.
Gills: adnate or with a slight tooth, close to subdistant, narrow to broad, rather thick at times and interveined; "pale smoke gray" becoming watery gray, (Smith), deeply emarginate-adnate, whitish to grayish, (Moser), slightly notched to finely adnexed, 20-25 reaching stem, broad, often forked, 1-7 subgills between neighboring gills; whitish; edges smooth, (Breitenbach)
Stem: 4-10cm x 0.2-0.5(0.7)cm, fragile, hollow; gray, paler than cap; white-pruinose when young becoming bald and watery; "base usually coated with white mycelium", (Smith), 5-10cm x 0.1-0.3cm, fragile; gray, gray-brown; pruinose when young, (Moser), 3-7cm x 0.2-0.4cm, cylindric, base sometimes slightly widened, stem fragile, hollow; "brownish, gray-whitish fibrillose", (Breitenbach)
Microscopic spores: spores 6-8 x 4-4.5 microns, elliptic, smooth, inamyloid; basidia 4-spored, 18-22 x 6.5-8 microns, pleurocystidia none, cheilocystidia basidia-like, (Smith), spores 5.5-8.5 x 3-5 microns (Moser), spores 6.1-8.5 x 3.1-5.0 microns, elliptic, smooth, iodine negative, some with droplets; basidia 4-spored, 28-35 x 5.5-8 microns, narrowly clavate, with siderophilic granules, with basal clamp connection; pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia not seen; cap cuticle of parallel [horizontal] hyphae 3-11 microns wide, occasional hyphal ends exserted and clavate; clamp connections mentioned for cap cuticle and basidia (Breitenbach)
Spore deposit: white (Breitenbach)
Habitat / Range
single to scattered or gregarious on Sphagnum in bogs, spring and summer, (Smith), on Sphagnum "usually in quaking bogs, in very damp places" (Moser), single to grouped, in moors and ditches, in damp areas among Sphagnum, sometimes growing on moss, (Breitenbach), spring, summer, fall, (Buczacki)
