Tulostoma pulchellum

Belconnen, ACT

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Identification history

	Tulostoma pulchellum	3 Aug 2018	Heino1
	Tulostoma	26 Jun 2018	Heino1

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2 comments

Heino1 wrote:

26 Jun 2018

The main part of Photo 1 shows two fruit bodies in situ and four removed and laid out to show side views. Initially the spore sac has a outer layer composed of hyphae and bound soil grains making it look greyish. The inset shows an in situ spore sac at such an an early stage. That ephemeral outer layer erodes to expose the whitish surface of the spore sac proper (and also the apical hole through which spores are released). Remnants of the ephemeral layer remain, at least for a while, around the base of the spore sac. The red arrows in Photo 2 point to seven fruit bodies. The spore sac can break off fairly easily from the buried stem. The stem fits into a hollow on the underside of the spore sac (a bit like a ball-and-socket joint) and leftmost in Photo 3 I show one spore sac turned over so as to reveal the hollow into which the stem had fitted. These specimens will become a herbarium collection and with a bit of luck a microscopic study will reveal the species.

Heino1 wrote:

3 Aug 2018

I have added to Photo 3. The inset at the upper left shows the inner surface of a fragment of an exoperidum. The inset at the lower left shows a close view of the mouth at the apex of a spore sac. The inset at the lower right shows some spores, photographed in a water mount (to which an iota of detergent had been added to help break up clumps of water repellent spores). The ones shown here are around 6 micrometres in diameter. The spores of this species are generally roughly globose but the literature notes them as “sometimes distorted” and here you see some that are noticeably angular. The spores are almost smooth when viewed in a light microscope, with a very fine ornamentation of tiny warts.

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