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Go to the NZFungi website for more indepth information on Humidicutis pura. Humidicutis pura

Synonyms

Hygrophorus purus

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Caption: Humidicutis pura
Owner: Kaimai Bush
Caption: Fig 44. Humidicutis pura (Peck) Horak (D-F: ZT 2011): D. basidiomes. E. spores. F. basidia. (K 654, type): G. spores.
Caption: FUNNZ: 2006/0014, See public note for more information
Owner: FUNNZ
 

Article: Horak, E. (1990). Monograph of the New Zealand Hygrophoraceae (Agaricales). New Zealand Journal of Botany 28(3): 255-306 (http://www.rsnz.org/publish/abstracts.php).
Description: Pileus -60 mm, conical becoming convex to umbonate-plane, margin radially splitting in aged : specimens; ivory to whitish; dry, silky to radially fibrillose, slightly striate at margin. - Lamellae distant to crowded, free to adnexed, up to 6 mm wide; white, edges entire, concolorous. - Stipe 20-60 x 3-8 mm, cylindrical, equal or attenuated towards base, sometimes subfusoid; white; dry, silky, hollow, very brittle, often twisted, single. - Context white, fragile. -Odour and taste not distinctive. -Chemical reactions on pileus: KOH, HCI, and NH3 - negative. Spores 6-9 (-10) x 4-5 um, ellipsoid. - Basidia 30-42 x 6-8 um, 4-spored, with medallion-like clamp connection at basal septum. - Cystidia absent - Pileipellis a cutis of repent, cylindrical hyphae (25 um diam.), hyaline membrane not gelatinised, minutely encrusted with pigment; clamp connections absent on septa of cuticular hyphae (Pl. 1, Fig. 8).
Habitat: ECOLOGY: Common; saprobic on soil among litter in beech forest (Nothofagus menziesii-N. fusca) or among Sphagnum in broadleaved-conifer forests (Leptospermum scoparium, Quintinia, Dacrydium). March-June.
Distribution: DISTRIBUTION: NZ (G, W, N, WL), USA.
Notes: All characters observed on the North American Hygrophorus purus Peck essentially agree with those described for H. mavis Stev. which in New Zealand is widely distributed both in Nothofagus and broadleaved-conifer forests.
The revision of authentic North American material kept in the Hesler collections (MICH) demonstrated that both the macroscopic and the microscopic data for Hygrophorus purus Peck are obviously erroneous (Hesler & Smith 1963: 214). The surface of pileus and stipe lacks gelatinised hyphae and therefore this fungus is misplaced in subsect. Psittacini. Clamp connections are absent or very rare on septa of the pileipellis but occur regularly at the base of the basidia. Hence the macroscopic and microscopic features clearly fit the generic circumscription of Humidicutis (Singer) Singer (Horak 1968: 281), and accordingly its transfer to this taxon is proposed.