Ascocoryne cylichnium

Description
Mushroom Identification
Look-Alikes
History
Synonyms

Description

Ascocoryne cylichnium is an inedible gelatinous pinkish or purple-colored disc or cup mushroom. The fruit body is up to 30 mm wide, frosted on the top, and smooth inside. At first, cup-like closed, later wavy open, the flesh is purple in color. It is grown in clusters on the trunks and branches of a variety of dead woods, often in broadleaf or mixed woodland.

Common names: Čihovitka větší (Czech Republic), Grootsporige Paarse Knoopzwam (Netherlands), Großsporiger Gallertbecher (German).

Mushroom Identification

Fruiting Body

5-30 mm wide; disc-shaped to cup-shaped or goblet-shaped; gelatinous; upper surface purple and bald; undersurface similar to the upper surface, or paler and finely fuzzy; with or without a poorly defined stem-like structure; odorless.
Stem

The stem (if present) is approximately 5 mm long and 2–4 mm thick, tapering towards the base.
Flesh

The flesh is stiff, gelatinous, brown-purple, flexible, tasteless, and odorless.
Spore Print

Whitish or yellowish.
Habitat

Saprobic on the well-decayed, wet wood of hardwoods or conifers; usually growing gregariously or clustered; widely distributed in North America.
Season

August to December, in mild winters until February, on rotting deciduous wood, often in moss.
Microscopic Features

Spores 18-27 x 4-6 µ; smooth; fusiform; multiguttulate; developing several septa with maturity; often with small, subglobose conidia forming, especially at the ends (conidia not coalescing into chains). Asci eight-spored; up to 220 x 15 µ; extreme apices blue in Melzer's reagent. Paraphyses filiform, with subclavate to clavate or subcapitate apices 1-3 µ wide.

Look-Alikes

Ascocoryne sarcoides

Microscopic differences will separate this species.
Pachyella clypeata

Grows in similar locations but is usually less purple, and it forms a disc that is attached to the wood to the edges, rather than only in a central location.
Ombrophila pura

Is usually twice as large at 5-6 cm as the large-spored gelatinous cup. It often appears in a shapeless manner and colonizes dead beech trunks and branches. It is distinguished by its pink-brown color, which rarely shines through with a violet tinge, and microscopically by the 7-9 µm small spores.
Ascocoryne inflata

Can be recognized microscopically by its constantly round-headed paraphyseal ends.
Ascotremella faginea

The rare fungus is confused with the pale red gelatinous cup. Its fruit bodies, which are like brains, are about the same size and hardly differ in color from the A. cylichnium. Grows on various dead deciduous trees, but very rarely on beech.

History

In 1853 Louis René Étienne Tulasne, a.k.a. Edmond Tulasne described this species and named it Peziza cylichnium.

Afterward, this species was transferred to the genus Ascocoryne in 1971 by American mycologist Richard Paul Korf, which established the current name Ascocoryne cylichnium.

The specific epithet cylichnium is a reference to the Greek word "goblet" which describe the shape of the mushroom.