Fungus Fact Friday

Tagged: coral

mushrooms with a coral morphology

#056: Artomyces pyxidatus, The Crown-Tipped Coral Fungus 0

Fungus Fact

#056: Artomyces pyxidatus, The Crown-Tipped Coral Fungus

This beautiful coral mushroom is easily distinguished by its distinctive tips. The tip of each branch sports a number of small points that surround a bowl-like, central depression.  It is this crown-like arrangement that earned the Crown-Tipped Coral its common name.  No other coral fungi in North America have this distinctive crown pattern, so pyxidatus is easy to identify.  The fruiting body is a medium-sized to large, branching structure, like other coral fungi.  Each branch develops from one of the tips at the end of another branch.  Older branches at the base of the mushroom are thicker to support the rest of the structure.  The coral fungus varies in color from white to yellowish to tan, with the newly-formed branches at the top lighter than the old branches at the base.

#038: Mushroom Morphology: Corals and Clubs 1

Fungus Fact

#038: Mushroom Morphology: Corals and Clubs

Most mushroom-forming Orders of fungi has evolved a coral or club morphology. To simplify things, I am using “Corals and Clubs” to refer to only clavarioid (coral-like) mushrooms in the Phylum Basidiomycota.  For clavarioid mushrooms in the Phylum Ascomycota, see FFF#036 (Earth Tongues) and FFF#037 (Earth Tongue Look-Alikes).  Unlike the earth tongues and look-alikes, the corals and clubs produce spores externally on basidia (see FFF#012 and #013 for more on basidia and asci).  If you have a microscope available, checking to see how your mushroom produces its spores can help eliminate some possibilities.