Favolaschia auriscalpium (Mont.) Henn., Botanische Jahrbücher für Systematik Pflanzengeschichte und Pflanzengeographie 22: 93 (1895)
Facesoffungi number: FoF 3138
Pileus small, orange, becoming yellow and ultimately dirty pallid when dry, orbicular in outline, convex, glabrous. Pores concolorous or yellowish, some irregularly elongated, dried 0.2–0.4 mm wide, frequently hexagonal. Pseudostipe concolorous with the pileus, laterally attached to the pileus, subvelutinous, insititious, up to 1.8 × 0.3 mm. Basidiospores 8–11 × 5–7 µm, ellipsoid, sometimes slightly constricted in the middle or reniform, smooth, amyloid. Basidia 23–26 × 7–8 µm, 4–spored, rarely 2–spored, mostly clavate or constriction in the middle. Gloeocystidia few or none. Hyphae filamentous, hyaline, truly gelatinized, thin walled in parts of the trama, non-gelatinized and often broader and somewhat thick-walled in other parts, predominantly in the pseudostipe, all hyphae inamyloid, and clamp connections present. Gloeocystidia 21–35 × 9–22 µm, mostly clavate or ventricose to subvesiculose, rarely cylindrical, hyaline to yellowish. Dermatocystidia 19–29 × 6–14 µm, hyaline, thin-walled, erect, subvesiculose or broadly ventricose, deep purplish-pink in Cresyl blue mounts, obtuse or rarely somewhat mucronate, crowded at the epicutis, otherwise few.
Habit, habitat and distribution: as a group on dead wood, inflorescences, leaf sheaths or petioles of Palmae, May to September. Our collection was collected on a decaying wood near Hanthana Mountains Range, Peradeniya.
Specimens examined: SRI LANKA, Kandy District, Hanthana Mountains Range, 30 June 2012, Samantha C. Karunarathna (MFLU 12-1891, new record). GenBank number ITS:KY649461.
Notes: This species was first described from Gulf Coast of South America and this is the first report of F. auriscalpium with the molecular phylogenetic confirmation from Sri Lanka. Favolaschia auriscalpium is morphologically closely related to F. calocera R. Heim. but F. calocera differs by having 2 spored, clavate, 38–40 x 7–10 μm size basidia whereas F. auriscalpium has 4 spored, clavate 23–26 × 7–8 µm size basidia. Phylogenetic analysis also supports to place the species in F. auriscalpium.
Phylogenetic relationships inferred from maximum parsimony analysis of ITS-rDNA sequences of 31 taxa. The percentages of replicate trees in which the associated taxa clustered together in the bootstrap test (1,000 replicates) are shown next to the branches. The tree is drawn to scale, with branch lengths in the same units as those of the evolutionary distances used to infer the phylogenetic tree. The new Sri Lankan records: Favolaschia auriscalpium having GenBank accession number KY649461 and herbarium number MFLU 12-1891; Favolaschia manipularis having GenBank accession number KY649462 and herbarium number MFLU 12-1172 (ITS-rDNA) are shown in bold and blue. The topology is rooted with Mycena crocata. Evolutionary analysis was conducted in PAUP 4.0b 10.
Basidiocarps of Favolaschia auriscalpium in the field (MFLU 12-1891)
Favolaschia auriscalpium (MFLU 12-1891). a Gloeocystidia. b Acanthocysts. c Epicular elements (smooth dermatocystidia). d Pores. e Basidia. f Basidiospores.