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Species Information
Summary: Features include 1) small, hard, black cups that emerge from larch or other conifers, single or in clusters, 2) upper surface black or greenish when moist, 3) stem absent or short, and 4) 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, MB, NB, NF, ON, PQ, ME, NY, UT, WY, France, Switzerland, and Japan, (Ouellette). Collections were examined from ID, ON, MA, NH, and Austria, (Groves). There are two collections from WA at Oregon State University.
Upper surface: 0.05-0.1cm across, 0.04-0.13cm high, circular or undulate; spore-bearing upper surface at first concave, becoming flat to convex, black or greenish when moist, more fleshy than exterior; at first with a thick raised margin which later may almost disappear; pycnidia 0.02-0.03cm across, nearly spherical to ovoid, containing a singly spherical to ovoid cavity, opening at top, (Groves)
Flesh: hard, horny, becoming more cartilaginous when moist; pycnidia similar, (Groves)
Stem: "sessile, narrowed below to substipitate", (Groves)
Microscopic: primary ascospores 7-10 x 3-4 microns, "ellipsoid-fusiform", colorless, one-celled or two-celled, irregularly biseriate to uniseriate; secondary ascospores 2.0-3.0 x 1.0-1.5 microns, cylindric to allantoid, colorless, one-celled; asci at first 8-spored, finally multispored, (70)80-110(120) x (11)13-15(17) microns, cylindric, obtuse at top, narrowed in lower part to a short stem, at first ascus with walls thickened and gelatinized, becoming thinner when mature; paraphyses about 1.5-2.5 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 2.0-3.0 x 1.0-1.5 microns, cylindric to allantoid, colorless, one-celled, "borne at the tip and along the sides of the conidiophore", conidiophores lining the cavity, about 15-50 x 1.5-2.0 microns, filiform, colorless, septate, not observed branching, (Groves), ascospores are characteristically clavate, sometimes very narrowly so, straight or curved, rather than ellipsoid-fusiform as described by Groves, (Ouellette)
Habitat / Range
scattered, separate or cespitose, erumpent [emerging] "in small usually more or less elongated clusters", on Larix spp. (larch); conidial fruitbodies "erumpent, cespitose, in clusters of up to 12-15, occasionally single", the clusters 0.05-0.1cm across and 0.04-0.1cm high, (Groves), on Larix (larch), Abies (fir), Picea (spruce), Pinus (pine), and Thuja (Red-cedar), (Ouellette)
Similar Species
When T. laricina occurs on pine, it can be confused with Tympanis confusa (which has primary ascospores more than 2-septate), and with Tympanis hypopodia (see below). When T. laricina occurs on Abies, it can be confused with Tympanis truncatula (primary ascospores broadly elliptic to nearly round) and T. hypopodia (see below). When T. laricina occurs on Picea, it can be confused with T. hypopodia, but spores are of T. laricina are characteristically clavate, sometimes very narrowly so, and germinate at each end into tufts of subglobose, ovoid, or pyriform cells, producing short, allantoid, almost rod-shaped ultimate cells, whereas T. hypopodia spores are elliptic-fusoid, sometimes subclavate and curved, narrow or wide, and bud off ovoid cells from each tip during germination, the ultimate cells allantoid and apparently slightly longer than those of T. laricina. (Ouellette).
