Microglossum viride

Description
Mushroom Identification
History
Synonyms

Description

Microglossum viride is a species of fungi in the family Geoglossaceae. This diminutive earth tongue with a bright blue-green fruiting body is one of the prettiest and unmistakable of spring fungi. Only Chlorociboria aeruginascens, a relatively uncommon cup fungus, which grows on rotting wood, is similarly colored. Related earth tongues in the genera Geoglossum and Trichoglossum are easily distinguished by their blackish hue.

It is found in woodlands in North America, Australia and Europe.

Common names: Green Earthtongue.

Mushroom Identification

Ecology

Traditionally reported as saprobic; growing alone to gregariously in moss under hardwoods (and reported by others under conifers); summer and fall (and overwinter in coastal California); reported in North America from California, the eastern United States, and the Midwest; not common.
Fruiting Body

15-45 mm high; consisting of a clearly defined, flattened head structure and a stem.
Head

6-26 mm high; 1-6 mm across; cylindric at first, becoming somewhat flattened and developing a central, longitudinal groove; bald; bright to dull green.
Stem

9-21 mm long; 1-3 mm wide; cylindric; when fresh, pale pastel green and bald underneath darker green tufts and scales; sometimes becoming darker green and more or less bald in very old age.
Flesh

Whitish to greenish; unchanging when sliced.
Chemical Reactions

KOH negative on the surface of the head.
Microscopic Features

Spores 17-22 x 4-5 µ; fusiform to suballantoid; smooth; slightly curved; 3-5-guttulate (appearing almost septate but with septa hard to define) and hyaline in KOH. Asci 8-spored; tips blue in Melzer's reagent. Paraphyses filiform; apices subclavate to nearly capitate; 1-2 µ wide; hyaline to greenish in KOH.
Similar Species

Microglossum griseoviride has colder colors, grayish-green to blue-green, and grows far from water in litter from broad-leaved trees. There is also a group of green to blue-green species around Microglossum nudipes that have stipe without scales and can be usually found on grasslands and pastures.

History

The word Microglossum comes from the Greek words mikrós + glōssa, and means "small tongue". The species epithet, viride, comes from the Latin viridis for "green."

Microglossum viride was described by Christiaan Hendrik Persoon in 1797 as Geoglossum viride. In 1879 it was moved into the genus Microglossum.