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| The families of mushrooms and toadstools represented in Britain and Ireland |
Morphology. The fruit-bodies producing asci and ascospores; discoid to cupulate, or cushion-shaped (usually, never hairy); usually stipitate; small; brightly pigmented, or not brightly pigmented (at least sometimes whitish); apothecial (usually), or cleistothecial (rarely); producing asci and spores on an exposed hymenium, or tuberous or globose and subterranean, the asci and spores produced from an enclosed hymenium; stromata absent. The asci 8-spored, persistent, usually broad, protruding above the hymenium when mature; asci operculate; apically thin walled (even when immature). The walls of the asci staining blue with iodine (rarely), or not staining blue with iodine. The ascospores biseriately arranged, sometimes dispersed as a common unit; ellipsoid (usually?), or elongate; usually strongly ornamented (thick walled); usually dark brown (often with a purple-brown epispore); simple; with a mucilaginous sheath, or without a mucilaginous sheath.
The hyphae without clamp connections. The hyphal walls lamellate, double layered, with both layers electron dense.
Ecology. Saprophytic. Coprophilous (often), or keratinophilic, or neither coprophilous nor particularly associated with decaying keratinous materials (sometimes on decaying herbaceous plants, e.g. Umbelliferae). The fruit-bodies on dead wood.
Representation in Britain and Ireland. About 60 species in Britain; Ascobolus, Ascophanus, Saccolobus, Thecotheus.
World representation. 106 species; genera 9. Mostly temperate.
Classification. Ascomycota; Ascomycetes; Pezizomycetidae; Pezizales.
Illustrations. • Ascobolus brassicae and Saccobolus beckii (Petersens). ASCOBOLACEAE. 1, Saccobolus beckii. 2, Ascobolus brassicae. Photos from www.mycokey.com (Jens H. Petersens).
We advise against extracting comparative information from the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using the DELTA data files or the interactive key, which allows access to the character list, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lacking specified attributes, and distributions of character states within any set of taxa. See also Guidelines for using data taken from Web publications.
Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 2008 onwards. The families of mushrooms and toadstools represented in Britain and Ireland. Version: 5th August 2019. delta-intkey.com’.
