Fungi > Division Basidiomycota > Class Agaricomycetes > Order Agaricales > Family Nidulariaceae.
Synonyms include Nidularia striata.
The Fluted Bird’s Nest grows on rotting wood, mulch and leaf litter.
A common species they grow in dense clusters.
They have a ‘nest’ (the peridium) with spores contained in ‘eggs” (peridioles).
Young peridia are a small roundish fruit body with the top covered by a membrane or lid.
These are pale brown, have hairs all over and have no definite stem.
Mature fruit bodies are an inverted cone typically under 1 cm high and wide.
The pale to dark brown or greyish outside is covered with longish shaggy hairs.
The hairs wear off the lid and it eventually splits and falls off to reveal the inside of the ‘nest’.
The inside of the cup is a shiny dark or blue-grey.
The upper half of the inner surface has vertical striations.
In the cup, tethered by a cord or funiculus are a number of peridioles.
The funiculi may be difficult to see.
Made of condensed hyphae they are in 3 sections illustrated below.
The grey to black spore containing peridioles, around 1.5 mm across are disc-shaped with a thick rim.
The slope of the cup sides is such that a drop of rain will splash the peridioles out.
It is very similar to Cyathus stercoreus but this has no striations on the inside of the cup.
J.F.
