Disciseda australis

The second photo gives you an idea of the habitat (with only grass or herbaceous species present) and the arrows point out two fruit bodies. At the left in the lower section of the third photo I show a cross-section of one fruit body. It is supported loosely by a pair of tweezers and they are not compressing it in the slightest. To its right are close views of the mouths of two fruit bodies, showing their raised and nipple-like to somewhat tubular appearance. In the fourth photo I show numerous spores (along with some of the hyphae that make up the cotton-wool-like matrix in which the spores sit). The material is in a potassium hydroxide solution. The spores of this species have a slight ornamentation which (e.g. in those arrowed in red) shows up as a slight roughness around the perimeter or as darker dots over the surface. Inset at the lower right (at a different scale) is another spore. The spores may move about slightly in the mounting fluid, hence the fuzziness. The spores also have short stems and two are pointed to by the black arrows. The spores are spherical (or almost so) with diameters ranging from 4.8 to 6.4 microns. The fruit body’s loose, outer casing (or exoperidium) consists of fungal tissue bound with soil grains and other debris. In this species, as well as filamentous hyphae, large swollen cells of various shapes help make up the exoperidium and in the fifth photo I show some of them (as well as tiny soil grains, some other rubbish and a few hyphal fragments).