Ampulloclitocybe avellaneialba
Description
Ampulloclitocybe avellaneialba is a distinctive clitocyboid mushroom from the Pacific Northwest. It has a dark brown cap that contrasts nicely with its decurrent white gills, it grows from the wood or woody debris of conifers, and, under the microscope, it features very funky, swollen-fusiform spores.
Ampulloclitocybe clavipes is similar, but grows on the ground, is usually paler, and features very different, ellipsoid spores.
Mushroom Identification
Ecology
Saprobic; growing alone or gregariously on the well-decayed deadwood of conifers; sometimes growing from buried deadwood and appearing terrestrial; fall and early winter; Pacific Northwest, northern California, and the northern Rocky Mountains.
Cap
2–10 cm; at first flat with a slightly incurved margin, becoming centrally depressed and, eventually, vase-shaped, with an uplifted margin; very finely hairy, or nearly bald; moist; dark brown.
Gills
Running deeply down the stem; close; short-gills frequent; whitish.
Stem
4–10 cm long; 1–2 cm thick; more or less equal; bald or minutely hairy; pale brown.
Flesh
Whitish; unchanging when sliced.
Odor and Taste
Not distinctive.
Spore Print
Reported by Bigelow (1982a) as white.
Microscopic Details
Spores 6–10 x 3–4.5 µm; widely fusiform-limoniform; smooth; thick-walled; hyaline in KOH; inamyloid. Hymenial cystidia not found. Pileipellis a cutis with areas of ascending hyphae; brown in KOH; elements 5–7.5 µm wide, smooth, clamped at septa.
Synonyms
Clitocybe avellaneialba Murrill, Mycologia 5 (4): 207 (1913)
Clitocybe avellaneoalba Murrill, Mycologia 5 (4): 207 (1913)
Clavicybe avellaneoalba (Murrill) Harmaja, Karstenia 42 (2): 42 (2002)
Photo sources:
Photo 1 - Author: chloe_and_trevor (CC BY 4.0)
Photo 2 - Author: chloe_and_trevor (CC BY 4.0)
Photo 3 - Author: chloe_and_trevor (CC BY 4.0)