Text-fig. 5.

Basonym: Clavaria surculus Berkeley 1842, p. 154, t. 6, f. 5.

Distribution: Waikaremoana, North Island, New Zealand, May, 1949, No. 187. Plants found growing at the base of Dacrydium cupressinum with a mass of mycelium covering the litter, twigs and leaves.

Fruit body –4 cm. high (mostly 2 cm.), caespitose to densely gregarious; pinkish-flesh colour when fresh, drying a cream-fawn to tan colour; mycelium cream-white, permeating the litter, with plants often arising from a dense patch on a twig: stem distinct, branches few to several, 2–4 chomotous below, dichotomous at tips, terete with tendency towards flattening, a few palmately branched; tips short and acute, or elongated.

Spores 14.5–20.5 × 4–5μ white en masse, creamy-yellow in dilute potash, smooth, cylindric-oblong to subsigmoid, with a subterminal apiculus, aguttate, thin walled.

Basidia clavate, 40–50μ × 6–8μ, with (1-) 2–4 sterigmata 8–11.6μ long, erect with a slight inward curve.

Text-Fig. V.
Lentaria surculus.
Fruit body on left, × 2; Spores, hyphae and basidia, × 750.