Well, that's my name for it, as I could not find anything to match it during a brief online search. I did come across a paper discussing bryosymbiotic microfungi, listing
Cepahlozia as a host, but there was no named species, nor description. This fungus appears to be present on
Calypogeia fissa too, so would appear not be host-specific. If anyone knows anything about this small but striking fungus I'd love to know. For ref, I encountered it during yesterday's lunchtime 'mundane habitat' search - a ditch between colliery spoil and
Molinia mire (photo) - spot the
Osmunda, the main bryo-elements being
Calypogeia arguta, Pellia epiphylla, Sphagnum fimbriatum and
Dicranella heteromalla.
I took the liberty of posting the link on the Glamorgan Fungus Group facebook page and Brian Douglas has come back with a suggestion straight away - Mniaecia jungermanniae.
ReplyDeleteAn additional comment from Brian: "Only niggle I can see is that the paraphyses should be swollen at the tips, and I can't see that in the images - possibly because they're immature? I'm not sure if there's a sibling species with non-swollen paraphyses yet, but otherwise it seems to look like a good candidate."
ReplyDeleteAlso from Brian Douglas - some images from Zotto Baral's image library for reference: https://drive.google.com/.../0B5SeyOEkxxZhaTlpckgzX1JwbGc
ReplyDeleteHere's the full link to the above images, since copying from Facebook seems to have truncated it: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B5SeyOEkxxZhaTlpckgzX1JwbGc .
ReplyDeleteOops didn't spot that, thanks Brian
ReplyDeleteThank you Brian. It looks very close though as you point out, the skinny paraphyses aren't quite right. Also the whole body seems more spherical than the flatter, disc-shaped ones shown in the link. As you say possibly immature, though they all looked very similar. Would you like a specimen?
ReplyDeleteThanks George for getting this moving.