| | The families of mushrooms and toadstools represented in Britain and Ireland |
Morphology. The fruit-bodies producing basidia and basidiospores; clustered, or solitary; angiocarpic; a globose or tuberiform gasterocarp (very small, subglobose, anchored in the substrate with a minute pedicel); tiny; 0.1–0.3 cm across; brightly pigmented to not brightly pigmented; white or whitish, or yellowish-brown, or pink, or orange (finally, this being the maturation sequence). The gasterocarp without a columella (the gleba homogeneous or with small locules and no real hymenium, mucilaginous at maturity). The peridium dehiscent; opening irregularly. The basidia ‘unmodified’; bearing 4–8 apical basidiospores, but without sterigmata, the spores attached via short cylindrical projections from their bases. The basidiospores appendaged, with a slender, flexible, hyaline appendage; statismosporic; hyaline.
The hyphal walls lamellate, with a thin, electron-dense outer layer and a relatively thick, electron-transparent inner layer.
Ecology. Marine.
Representation in Britain and Ireland. 1 species in Britain (N. vibrissa); Nia.
World representation. 2 species; genera 1. Widespread in the northern hemisphere.
Classification. Basidiomycota; Basidiomycetes; Agaricomycetidae; Agaricales (?).
Comments. See Mycologia 51: 874, 1959.
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’.