Hi Gernot,

This is most likely Trichophaeopsis bicuspis.
A sheath around the spores can occur but usually disappears after a while. The invisibility of oil drops - mostly two small clusters or big ones near the poles - can be caused by the presence of the sheath.
I found this species several times on debris, leafs, twigs, branches and wood of Populus. Also on bare soil with Populus nearby.

Best wishes,
Ron

Hi Ron,

thanks for your response! I find it very interesting that the visibility of the content of the ascosospores can be influenced by the presence of a sheath. I was a bit unsure whether it could actually be T. bicuspis since I have never found this species before and its ascospores are usually illustrated and described as having a few oil drops.

Populus could be a good guess - according to the person who found it there are a lot of Populus trees around in the area where she found this fungus.

Best wishes and thanks again,
Gernot

I don't believe that it is bicuspis. The spores are too long and lack any larger LBs.
I attach a drawing of mine. Also other illustrations of bicuspis that I have checked show oil drops in the spores.

No idea what species it might be.

Zotto

Dear Zotto,

I have studied several living collections of this beautiful species and the spore size can range from (14)15-18(20) x 9-12 ?m.
The absence or should we say invisibility of oil drops is indeed remarkable and I also never observed this in my material.
But there are other mycologists who did.
Kanouse (1958) described the spores of North American collections as non-guttulate and from the Tien-Shan mountains Dissing & Raitviir (1973) also reported spores without oil guttules. There also is a drawing on the internet of an Italian collection showing spores without oil drops.
Besides the absence or invisibility of oil drops in the spores Gernot's collection fits perfectly within the variable characteristics of this species.
Whether this collection belongs to another (undescribed?) species, i have my doubts.
Probably only molecular analysis can tell for sure.

All the best!
Ron

Dear Ron & Gernot

yes, surely molecular data would help here. But I must doubt literature reports on missing guttules. Frequently they are omitted, and more often they are masked by the use of viscous media such as MLZ or CB, or difficult to see in water mounts of herbarium material.

In Gernot's case the spores are alive, and there is actually no oil present. Lipid may become less refractive when spores reach maturity, due to an increased refringence of the plasma, but they never get invisible.

In GenBank I see only two sequences of T. bvicuspis, SSU and LSU.
A BLAST of LSU yields only one additional Trichophaeopsis, T. tetraspora.

Ron, do you have note or illustrations of large spores with guttules?

Zotto

Hi.
About T. bicuspis, I have a collection (unfortunately only one small apothecium) with ascospores 17-20(22) × 11-13(14) µm and containing clusters of guttules at the pole (studied in living state of course). It was collected on rotting wood of Populus.
About the Gernot's collection, I agree with Zotto that such eguttulate ascospores should exclude T. bicuspis.

Hi everybody,

Dear Zotto, yesterday evening I searched for my notes and sketches concerning T. bicuspis. Unfortunately I was not able to find them, seem to got lost in one of many piles or accidentally thrown away when we moved to another house.

If the absence of oil drops in the spores seems to be the only reason to seperate this collection from T. bicuspis what will be the next step?

All the best!
Ron

Hi all,

interesting discussion!

As I just found out, there is a Trichophaea eguttulispora which is discussed by Korf here: http://www.cybertruffle.org.uk/cyberliber/59575/0005/002/0511.htm. He combines this taxon as a subspecies to Trichophaeopsis bicuspis, and according to Index Fungorum it is simply a synonym of that species. I don't have access to the original description of Trichophaea eguttulispora, though.

Also maybe interesting to note that the ascospores of my collection look very similar to those of Trichophaeopsis tetraspora as shown by Enrique (completely eguttulate and with a sheath): http://www.ascofrance.fr/search_recolte/3956. />

Best wishes,
Gernot

Hi,

Tedersoo et. al, Mycorrhiza 20, 2010: 242 mention an ITS-sequence from a Chilean T. eguttulispora by Smith&Pfister, unpublished. I can't find in on GenBank. Is it still unpublished?

Regards
Martin

Gamundi's work is really excellent! But usually she is working with herbarium material, and she seems not to be aware of the strong differences betwen living and dead. In the case of T. eguttulispora it might be that the spores were still alive when she studied them, maybe still alive after several years in the herbarium, but we cannot be sure.

The irregular large body that Korf saw in the spores of the type of eguttulispora was called by him "non-oleaginous". I do not understand why he named it so. After his method (invisible in MLZ or CB, visible in KOH-phloxine-glycerine) I would conclude that it was lipidic. If that would be true I see a serious problem with Gamundi's "eguttulispora".

Zotto

"The irregular large body that Korf saw in the spores of the type of eguttulispora was called by him "non-oleaginous"."

Hi Zotto,

here is a collection from Canada:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/19369983@N06/17086230816
The "De Bary-Bubble" could correspond. Couldn't it?

Regards
Martin

Hi Martin

you may be right, that this is a possibility, though I thought that Dick knows how to recognize DBBs. Indeed, his Fig. 1 right spore shows a DBB (drawn with very thick black line), as he also explains in the legend.

Zotto