Ramaria botrytoides

Description

Ramaria botrytoides is a species of coral fungus in the family Gomphaceae. The fungus shows the cherry pink to reddish apices and the cream to pink-tinted branches. An aborted branchlet is seen near the stipe base to the right of center.

First described by American mycologist Charles Horton Peck in 1905 as Clavaria botryoides, it was transferred to the genus Ramaria in 1950 by E.J.H. Corner. Found in the eastern United States, it resembles Ramaria botrytis, but can be most reliably distinguished from that species by the lack of longitudinal striations in its spores.

Some sources mark this mushroom as edible, but Ultimate Mushroom didn't find any scientific approval for these words.

Clavaria botryoides Peck (1905) is a synonym.

Mushroom Identification

1. Fruiting Bodies

   8–12 × 7–11 cm, at first compact then undergoing subapical branch elongation and becoming more open coralloid then finally with long apical branchlets; apices coral to scarlet but slowly becoming pale pinkish buff at late maturity, at first bluntly cuspidate with dichotomous or double dichotomous rounded endings, but then undergoing subapical elongation and producing single or dichotomous bluntly rounded apices; branches pale coral but slowly losing all pink tints and becoming a shade of buff at maturity, cylindrical, finely and abundantly longitudinally sulcate (best seen under x10 lens); axils round, U-shaped; stipe 2–4 × 1 1.5 cm, pale buff above and white below, smooth or with a little floccose material on the surface, numerous aborted branches present, cylindrical to conical, tough and deep rooting.

2. Flesh

   White, without color changes.

3. Odor and Taste

   The odor is mildly pleasant; taste not recorded.

4. Macrochemical Reactions

   KOH and KI both negative.

5. Basidiospores

   7.5–10.8 × 3.5–5.5 μm, mean 9.5 × 4.5 μm, Q: 1.7–2.3, mean Q: 1.95, ellipsoid to shortly cylindrical, usually with one or two guttules, hilar appendix prominent, ornamentation of scattered warts and short ridges, spore wall and warts cyanophilic in cotton blue; basidia 74–92 × 6–8.5 μm, mean 83.1 × 7.3 μm, 4-spored, clamps absent; sterigmata –7 μm, conical, straight or a little curved; branch trama with gloeoplerous hyphae 2.5–5.0 μm diam., composed of thin-walled, septate hyphae 4–12 μm diam., clamps absent; ampulliform septa abundant, 12–15 μm diam., usually abundantly decorated with stalactitic ornamentation; stipe trama similar to branch trama; rhizomorphs absent.

6. Habit

   Grows solitary or in small groups on soil amongst the litter in wet eucalypt forests.

Photo sources:

Photo 1 - Author: Ian Dodd (kk) (www.kundabungkid.com) Australia (kundabungkid) (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Photo 2 - Author: Ian Dodd (kk) (www.kundabungkid.com) Australia (kundabungkid) (CC BY-SA 3.0)