Chlorosplenium chlora

Description
Mushroom Identification
Synonyms

Description

Chlorosplenium chlora is a tiny cup fungus that grows on the well-rotted, barkless wood of hardwoods or conifers in eastern North America. Its colors range from yellow to olive green and are strongest on the undersurface.

This species does not appear in many field guides but it is not uncommon in my experience. It is quite small, though. A good field character is the rim of the cup which appears as a yellow circle surrounding the greenish fertile surface.

Mushroom Identification

Ecology
Saprobic on well-decayed, barkless wood of hardwoods or conifers; growing gregariously to densely gregariously; summer and fall; widely distributed in North America east of the Great Plains.
Fruiting Body
Cup-shaped at first, becoming flattened or disc-shaped; without a stem; cups 1–3 mm across; upper surface bald, yellow at first, becoming pale yellow to whitish or grayish, and eventually greenish; undersurface bright yellow, finely and sparsely fibrillose when viewed with a lens; flesh yellowish to greenish, unchanging when sliced.
Odor
Not distinctive.
Microscopic Features
Spores 7–9 x 1–2 µm; subfusiform or nearly cylindric; smooth; hyaline and biguttulate in KOH. Asci 45–65 µm long; cylindric; hyaline in KOH; hyaline with a tiny amyloid tip in Melzer's. Paraphyses filiform with subacute or merely rounded apices; 45–65 x 1–2 µm. Medullary excipulum elements are green in KOH.