Helvellosebacina concrescens
Description
Helvellosebacina concrescens is a mycorrhizal fungus, forming a range of associations with trees, orchids, and other plants. Basidiocarps (fruit bodies) are produced on soil and litter, sometimes partly encrusting stems of living plants.
Tremella concrescens and Sebacina concrescens are former names.
Mushroom Identification
Ecology
Mycorrhizal with hardwoods; growing in amorphous masses that climb from the ground, up the stems of plants; summer and fall, or occasionally overwinter in warm climates; widely distributed in North America from the Great Plains eastward, southward into Mexico; also known from South America.
Fruiting Body
An amorphous, vaguely lobed mass of material 2–10 cm across; usually 0.5–1 cm thick; surface bald, moist when fresh, pale watery gray to whitish; flesh gelatinous, watery whitish; drying to brown.
Odor
Not distinctive.
Spore Print
White.
Microscopic Features
Spores 10–16 x 4–6.5 µm; amygdaliform becoming widely allantoid, ellipsoid, or irregular; smooth; hyaline in KOH; walls cyanophilic. Probasidia 9–15 µm across; pyriform (above the pedestal subglobose to ovoid); smooth; hyaline in KOH; becoming cruciate. Basidia 10–15 x 12–18 µm; 4-sterigmate, with long, fingerlike sterigmata (to about 80 µm long). Hyphae 2–4 µm wide; often branched; septate; smooth; hyaline in KOH. Clamp connections not found.
Similar Species
Sebacina incrustans can look similar; however, the latter species is only a few millimeters thick, not as globular, and engulfs not only plant bases, but also sticks, leaves, and anything else it encounters.
Photo sources:
Photo 1 - Author: sarahduhon (CC BY 4.0)
Photo 2 - Author: doju (Attribution 4.0)
Photo 3 - Author: christineyoung (CC BY 4.0)
Photo 4 - Author: alan_rockefeller (Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International)
