Chroogomphus albipes
Fungal Diversity 38: 92. 2009.
Common Name: none
Synonyms: Brauniellula albipes (Zeller) A.H. Sm. & Singer; Brauniellula nancyae A.H. Sm.; Secotium albipes Zeller
Fruiting body erumpent to epigeous, 30-50 x 20-55 mm broad, subglobose to convex-depressed, regular in outline to weakly lobed; margin incurved, persistently fused, occasionally free from stipe in age; surface dry, greyish brown from appressed fibrils over a salmon to ochre ground color, at maturity often tinged reddish; context firm, ~2-3 mm thick, cream to pale orange, reddening in age or when exposed; odor and taste, not distinctive.
Spore bearing tissue of crumple folds, normal gills uncommon; ochre colored, becoming greyish brown.
Spores 15-19.5 x 6.5-8.5 µm, narrowly elliptical in face-view, slightly fusoid in profile, smooth, moderately thick walled (1-1.5 microns), walls reddening in 3% KOH; spores dextrinoid in Meltzer’s reagent; hilar appendage conspicuous; hymenial cystidia thin-walled, cylindrical, gradually tapered, sometimes encrusted; spore deposit absent.
Solitary to clustered, semi-emergent in duff of lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta and varieties); fruiting from late summer to fall in the Sierra Nevada, fall in the Coast Ranges; infrequent to locally common in wet years.
Presumably edible.
Chroogomphus albipes is a secotioid member of the pine spike genus. Typical of secotioid development, the greyish cap often remains closed at maturity, the salmon colored stipe is usually reduced, and the “gills” are crumpled. These features in combination with a tendency to develop underground, are believed to be adaptations to often dry conditions during the critical fruiting period and are part of an ecological trend seen in other mushroom groups in the Sierra Nevada. Chroogomphus albipes is also interesting as it appears to form an association with a species of Rhizopogon. Alexander Smith, in describing Brauniellula nancyae, a synonym of Chroogomphus albipes, observed that it often fruits in close proximity with Rhizopogon roseolus (syn. R. rubescens). These observations from Idaho, have not been documented for California but if so, they mirror similar associations in California for other Chroogomphus and Gomphidius species with the related genus Suillus.
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