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False Morel Project Record for 04100601 Collection Date: April 10, 2006 County or City: Coles Collector's Notes: Gyromitra caroliniana. In a gully, 20 feet from a creek; woods dominated by sycamore, eastern cottonwood, ash, and elm; oak-hickory woods on ridges above. About a week after very hard rains. Around the base of a fallen hardwood log: very old; decorticated; 2.5 feet in diameter; cubical white rot turning to dust. Armillaria rhizomorphs in the wood, and a fruiting of Polyporus squamosus. Nearest living tree was a box elder, 8 inches in diameter, a few feet from the specimens. Other nearby living trees: elm, box elder, and a sycamore 20 feet away. Soil temperature 66 degrees; pH 6.8. 3 specimens, sliced at the base; primary specimen = largest; supplemental specimens smaller. A fourth supplemental specimen collected a few days later. Primary specimen. 19 cm high (base was later retrieved and measured). Cap 8-10 cm high by 10-11 cm wide at widest point; globose-irregular; tightly adnate to stem; occasionally intergrown with stem. Hymenium broadly and tightly wrinkled; glabrous; brick red (near oac638); with "seams" that are tightly "sewn together" and primarily +/- vertically oriented, and which do not expose the excipular surface; surface between "seams" irregularly pitted-wrinkled. Excipular surface only visible by removing pieces of the cap; finely pubescent with a lens; watery beige (near oac801) to whitish. Stem massive; 12 cm high by 10 cm wide at widest point; substantially enlarged at base; thickly ribbed apically and basally, with smaller ribs developing between main ribs near the base; whitish and finely pubescent; bruising slowly reddish brown to brown on handling. Context brittle; whitish to watery beige; thickly chambered in stem; branching in the cap. Odor none (after several days in refrigerator). Chemicals (after several days in refrigerator, performed on supplemental specimen): Ammonia negative on hymenium, dark gray after 5-15 minutes on flesh; KOH +/- reddish orange on hymenium, negative elsewhere; Iron salts negative on all surfaces. Fourth supplemental specimen, picked a few days after the other specimens: has a brunnea-like, nearly lobed cap with an exposed excipular surface; growing directly from wood with dense white mycelium binding the wood. Other supplemental specimens without appreciable morphological differences, aside from size. Micromorphology of fourth (lobed) supplemental collection. Immature. Paraphyses about 120 x 7 µ; cylindrical with rounded apices; with granular orangish pigment apically (2% KOH mount). Asci hyaline (2% KOH); to about 215 x 24 µ; 8-spored. Spores in asci about 21 x 10 µ; uniguttluate; smooth; elliptical. Stem surface with hyaline (2% KOH), cylindric, apically rounded elements.
Collector's Identification: Gyromitra caroliniana |
