Agaricales » Agaricaceae » Eriocybe

Eriocybe chionea

Eriocybe chionea Vellinga, in Vellinga et al., Mycologia 103(3): 504 (2011)

 

Pileus 2028 mm, plano-convex with deflexed margin to more or less applanate set with cottonwool-like broad fluffy warts, composed of hyphae, pure white, with margin exceeding lamellae. Lamellae, l = 01(–3), crowded to crowded free, not remote from stipe, rounded near stipe, ventricose, 23 mm wide, (pale) cream white, with white, even to subtly cystidiose edge. Stipe 1822 x 4 mm, slightly narrower at apex, white, pale cream white and smooth above annular zone, below that with white fluff in bands or all over floccose, hollow. Annulus a widened white cottony, slightly flaring zone on stipe. Context white in pileus and stipe, thick in pileus. Odor spicy, camphor-like, totally different from any other species (ecv3560); strongly unpleasant, like rancid coconut (ecv3616). Taste not tested.

 

Basidiospores [40,2,2] in side view 4.05.2 x 2.33.1 µm, avl x avw = 4.54.6 x 2.9 µm, Q = 1.451.85, avQ = 1.551.6, ellipsoid to oblong, in frontal view ellipsoid to oblong, slightly thick-walled, smooth, without germ pore, often with guttule, congophilous, immediately dextrinoid in Melzers reagent, in cresyl blue with non-colored wall, and a pink line around blue contents, with blue walls in cotton blue. Basidia 1316 x 5.07.0 µm, four-spored, with scattered twospored basidia. Lamella edge sterile, set with cystidia. Cheilocystidia 1228 x 4.510 µm, cylindrical to narrowly clavate in one collection (ecv3616), and clavate, pedunculate fusiform, to narrowly clavate in the other (ecv3560). Pleurocystidia absent. Hymenophoral trama composed of cylindrical to inflated noncolored hyphae, 712 µm diam. Pileus covering a big felt-like mat composed of slightly inflated to cylindrical, non-pigmented hyphae with elements 45100 x 9.017 µm on top, with a big layer of narrow, 2.04.0 µm wide cylindrical, non-pigmented hyphae. Stipe covering as pileus covering. Clamp connections absent.

 

Habitat and distribution: Solitary, terrestrial, on road verge in mixed rain forest and on steep vertical red clay bank, 9001300 m, in northern Thailand, fruiting during the rainy season (JunJul). Found only twice so far.

 

 

Index fungorum number: IF518496

 

Notes: Eriocybe chionea is characterized by the small relatively short-stiped white felted-woolly basidiocarps with an unusual odor among the Agaricaceae; microscopically it is defined by the combination of spore size, narrowly clavate to clavate-fusiform cheilocystidia, the thick pileus covering composed of wide parallel hyphae and the absence of clamp connections.

Agaricus subg. Lanagaricus Heinem. comes close morphologically but has brown spores. Agaricus trisulphuratus Berk., the type species of this subgenus, has basidiocarps covered in pointed orange scales, which are composed of parallel cylindrical hyphae with incrusting pigment, a regular hymenophoral trama composed of cylindrical hyphae up to 7 mm diam and subutriform cheilocystidia (Vellinga pers obs). Species of Agaricus subg. Conioagaricus Heinem. also resemble Eriocybe because they have a velvety, powdery or squamulose pileus covering composed of ellipsoid to inflated short cells, which often have incrusted cell walls or an ornamentation composed of warts or spines (Heinemann 1956), but the stipe lacks this covering and of course the spores are brown. This subgenus has, as does Agaricus subg. Lanagaricus, a mainly tropical distribution.

 

Figure 1. rpb2 phylogeny of the Agaricaceae inferred by maximum likelihood (ML) analysis. Numbers at internodes refer to confidence estimates based on 100 rapid ML bootstraps (only those ˃ 70 are given). Coniolepiota and Eriocybe are highlighted, and main clades are indicated. Amanita brunnescens and A. muscaria, Hebeloma olympianum, Strobilomyces strobilaceus and Tubaria vinicolor are outgroup taxa.

 

 

Figure 2. Phylogeny of Agaricus and satellite genera in the Agaricaceae based on nrITS sequences, inferred by maximum likelihood (ML) analysis. Numbers at internodes refer to confidence estimates based on 100 rapid ML bootstraps (only those ˃70 are indicated). Coniolepiota and Eriocybe are highlighted, and genus Agaricus and the Agaricus clade indicated. Leucoagaricus barssii and La. leucothites are outgroup taxa.

 

 

 

Figure 3. A phylogeny of the Agaricaceae inferred by maximum likelihood (ML) analysis of a combined nrLSU, rpb2, tef1 and nrITS dataset. Numbers above branches refer to posterior probability scores before the / (those ˃ 0.94 are given) and confidence estimates based on 100 rapid ML bootstraps (only those . 75% are indicated) after the /; the numbers below the branches are bootstrap support values from the parsimony analysis (˃ 75%). Thick branches have a posterior probability ˃ 0.94, and both bootstrap values ˃ 75.

 

Figure 4. A, B. Eriocybe chionea, collection ecv3560 (photos ecv) N.B. the brown on top of the pileus is caused by soil and is not a discoloration of the pileus covering.

 

Figure 5. Eriocybe chionea, microsopic characters: A, D. spores, B, E. basidia, C, F cheilocystidia (AC from collection ecv3616, DF from collection ecv3560). Scale bar = 10 µm.

 

Reference:

Vellinga EC, Sysouphanthong P, Hyde KD 2011.The family Agaricaceae: phylogenies and two new white-spored genera. Mycologia 103(3):494509

 

About Basidiomycota

The webpage Basidiomycota provides an up-to-date classification and account of all genera of the phylum Basidiomycota.

 

Supported by 

Thailand Science Research and Innovation (TSRI)

project entitled:

"Macrofungi diversity research from the Lancang-Mekong Watershed and surrounding areas"

(Grant No. DBG6280009)

Contact

  • Email: basidio.org@yahoo.com
  • Addresses:
    Mushroom Research Foundation, 292 Moo 18, Bandu District,
    Muang Chiangrai 57100, Thailand
  • The State Key Lab of Mycology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No.3 1st Beichen West Rd., Chaoyang District, Beijing 100101, P.R. China


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