The Clavarioid fungi.
Clavarioid is a purely descriptive as Club and Coral fungi occur in various orders.
They are mostly Basidiomycetes but there are some Ascomycetes.
Basidiomycete orders include the Agaricales, Dacrymycetales, Russulales and Gomphales.
Genera and species are still being move around and sometimes re-named.
They are sometimes included in the jelly fungi group because of their tough, gelatinous texture.
They are in around 20 genera but often described as a group.
They live on soil, leaf litter or dead wood and may be solitary or clustered.
Size varies from a few mms up to 40 cm.
They have fleshy, erect, simple or branched fruit bodies.
The stalks are cylindrical or club-shaped with tips that can be blunt or pointed, branched and/or flattened.
Some are white, others are brightly coloured – yellow, brown, orange, purple or red.
Coral fungi come in shades of white, cream, grey, blue, purple, orange and red.
They have no gills or pores but spores are produced over the surface, either on the sides or the tips.
There are more than 30 genera, some easy to identify but many are extremely difficult.
Appearances include:
- Club fungi are single, upright, unbranched and club-shaped.
- Coral fungi are branched to varying degrees and resemble marine coral.
- Leafy fungi are corals in which the branches are flattened.
- A much branched coral with flattened branches may resemble a large cauliflower.
J.F.
