Truffle Genus: Cystangium

Cystangium ellipsosporum
basidiospore

Kingdom: Fungi
Phylum: Basidiomycota
Order: Russulales
Family: Russulaceae

Spore Characters

Generally similar to Gymnomyces but often longitudinally asymmetric with an offset attachment.

Sporocarp Characters

Differing from Gymnomyces and Macowanites by having a layer of one to many tiers of rounded and often inflated cells at or near the peridial surface, rather than interwoven hyphae.

View photos of Cystangium sporocarps

Name Derivation

Named by preeminent American mycologists and colleagues Alexander Smith (1904-1986) and Rolf Singer (1906-1994) (1960) from Greek, -cystis (bladder), and -angium (a vessel, a term used by 19th century mycologists to mean "sporocarp"), hence "a bladder-like sporocarp."

Distribution

Hypogeous under ectomycorrhizal conifers and hardwoods in Australia, eastern Europe, North America, southern South America, and South Africa.
Season: Summer and autumn.
Species known from North Temperate Forests: About twenty.

Keys and Descriptions

Singer and Smith (1960) covered the genus at that time. Later, Smith (1963) described new species and revised the key to the species; Pegler and Young (1979) and Miller (1988) describe and illustrate representative spores. Lebel and Trappe (2000) redefined the genus and Trappe, Lebel, and Castellano (2002) have corrected the nomenclature and list all species in the genus.