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Species Information
Summary: Features include small, hard, black cups that emerge from dead branches of alder, usually in clusters on a black mycelial stroma, the surfaces lightly to intensely grayish-pruinose, absent or short stem, and microscopic characters. The asci of species of Tympanis are usually filled with many small secondary spores: 8 well-developed ascospores are found extremely rarely (Breitenbach & Kranzlin).
Collections were examined from BC, AB, NB, NF, ON, PQ, ME, MN, ND, NY, WV, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, and Germany, (Ouellette), ID, NF, NS, PQ, ON, AK, CT, NH, NY, VT, WV, Denmark, and Germany, (Groves, but note a few of these might now be considered segregate species by Ouellette & Pirozynski (see SIMILAR)), and Switzerland (Breitenbach).
Upper surface: up to 0.03-0.1cm across, (usually in clusters up to 0.3cm long and 0.05-0.2cm high), circular or distorted by crowding, narrowed in lower part or suburceolate [somewhat pitcher-like with small mouth]; spore-bearing upper surface concave to flat, more fleshy than the exterior, black or sometimes grayish-pruinose; margin "thick, more or less inrolled, persistent"; conidial fruitbodies 0.02-0.04cm across, nearly spherical to ovoid, "erumpent, gregarious, cespitose in clusters of up to 30 or more", which are up to 0.3cm long and 0.1cm high, occasionally single, black, bald or grayish-pruinose, "sometimes the basal stroma only slightly developed and the pycnidia seated on it", (Groves, but note that Ouellette(1) includes the grayish pruinose and excludes the black), 0.05-0.1cm, erupting from under the bark, spherical when young, then cup-shaped; spore-bearing upper surface black and granular-rough; margin whitish, (Breitenbach)
Flesh: hard, horny, becoming more cartilaginous when moist, conidial fruitbodies similar, (Groves), cartilaginous and horn-like (Breitenbach)
Underside: black; bald or densely grayish pruinose, (Groves but note that Ouellette(1) excludes the bald ones), black with white furfuraceous coating, (Breitenbach)
Stem: without stem, tapering in lower part; conidial fruitbodies also without stem, tapering in lower part, (Groves), tapering into short stem, the individual fruiting bodies resting on a blackish stroma in groups of 5 to 30, (Breitenbach)
Microscopic: primary ascospores 5-6 x 4-5 microns, broadly elliptic to nearly round, colorless, 1-celled, uniseriate, secondary ascospores 3-4 x 1.0-1.5 microns, cylindric to allantoid, colorless, 1-celled; asci at first 8-spored, finally multispored, (110)135-190(215) x (14)18-22(25) microns, cylindric, obtuse at apex, narrowed in lower part to a short stem, at first with thick gelatinized walls that become thinner when mature; paraphyses about 2-3 microns wide, filiform [thread-like], colorless, septate, simple or branched, the tips slightly swollen and embedded in a brownish gelatinous matrix, forming an epithecium; conidia 3-5 x 1.0-1.5 microns, cylindric to allantoid, colorless, 1-celled, borne at tip and along sides of the conidiophores; conidiophores lining the pycnidial cavities, about 20-75 x 1.5-2 microns, filiform, colorless, simple or branched, septate; pycnidial cavities "variable, more or less ovoid in the separate pycnidia and about 120-300 microns in diameter, sometimes lobed and more irregular in the larger stromata", (Groves), spores 3-4 x 1-1.5 microns, cylindric, somewhat curved, smooth, colorless; asci many-spored, 209-220 x 23-25 microns, thick-walled, negative reaction to iodine; paraphyses filiform [thread-like], with slight clavate widening toward tip, surrounded with brownish amorphous material, (Breitenbach)
Habitat / Range
usually cespitose in clusters of 10-20 or more, occasionally single, on Alnus (alder) and Betula (birch), (Groves), in groups of 5-30, on "dead branches of Alnus (alder) still attached to the tree and with bark, as well as small trunks", according to the literature also on Betula (birch); spring, (Breitenbach), occasionally on Abies (Ouellette)
Similar Species
Tympanis hysterioides, considered by Groves as a variety of T. alnea, occurs on the same host (alder), but T. hysterioides differs "in having one-septate ascospores and ultimate cells which are intermediate in size between those of T. alnea and T. pseudoalnea. The apothecia are pale brown when sectioned and hysteriform in outline; this, however, is mainly due to their gregarious habit: the few solitary apothecia remain orbicular.", (Ouellette). Other species of Tympanis with collections from the Pacific Northwest in Groves(1) or Ouellette(1) are either not growing on alder or are not grayish-pruinose. Tympanis pseudoalnea Ouellette & Pirozynski was separated from the Groves concept of T. alnea by Ouellette(1), macroscopically differentiated as forming black, bald (as opposed to pruinose) fruiting bodies on Alnus (alder): collections were examined by Ouellette & Pirozynski from PQ and NY, (Ouellette).
