Summary: Features include 1) a small, cup-shaped to disc-shaped fruitbody, 2) upper surface almost black to almost white, 3) margin fringed with pale downy hairs, 4) exterior with short dark hairs, 5) absent stem, 6) growth on burned ground and charred wood, and 7) microscopic characters.
Microscopic: spores 14-15 x 6-8 microns, elliptic, ends narrowed, smooth, faintly yellow, with central droplet, uniseriate with ends overlapping; asci 8-spored, 120-150 x 8-10 microns, inamyloid; paraphyses filiform (thread-like), colorless, tip slightly clavate, 6-7 microns wide; marginal hairs 40-60 x 8 microns, dilute brown to colorless, darker in lower part, thin-walled, 1-3-septate, tip pointed, arising from the tip ends of chains of excipular cells, hairs below the margin long 120-250 x 6 microns, scattered, pale brown, sparingly septate, even in width throughout, tip pointed or blunt, (Kanouse), spores 13-14 x 6-7 microns, elliptic, smooth, with 2 drops, with de Bary bubbles; marginal hairs 50-80 x 4-7 microns, almost colorless, 1-5-septate, pointed, arising from bulbose cells up to 16 microns wide, exterior hairs longer, 80-150 x 4-7 microns, brown, thick-walled, (Hansen), spores 11-15 x 6.5-8 microns, elliptic, smooth, with 2 droplets; asci up to 160 x 11 microns; paraphyses "slender, clavate, 5-8 microns thick at the tip"; marginal hairs up to 70 microns long, base enlarged up to 15 microns wide, elsewhere tapered from 5-7 microns wide to a sharply pointed tip, hairs below margin up to 200 x 7 microns, dark brown, septate, (Dennis)
Notes: Trichophaea abundans is found in OR, ID, CA, and CO, (Larsen), and Denmark, Finland, and Norway, (Hansen). There is a collection from BC by O. Ceska at the University of British Columbia.
Habitat and Range
SIMILAR SPECIES
See also SIMILAR section of Trichophaea contradicta.
Habitat
on peat moss on burned soil; on sterilized soil in a greenhouse, (Kanouse), on burnt ground, very soon after the burning, (Hansen), on charred wood and burnt ground, spring and fall, (Dennis)