Truffle Genus: Gautieria
 Gautieria corraloides basidiospore |
Kingdom: Fungi Phylum: Basidiomycota Order: Gomphales Family: Gautieriaceae |
Spore Characters
Surface: Ornamented with longitudinal, usually slightly spiraled and forked ridges with rounded to humped margins; the ridges range from 0.5-1.0 µm tall in some species and up to 4.5 µm in others.
Shape and Size: Longitudinally symmetrical, ellipsoid, ovoid, obovoid, to globose, 10-32 x 6-18 µm including ornamentation; sterigmal attachment often prominent.
Wall: Single, 0.5-1.0 µm thick.
Color in Water: Nearly hyaline to pale brown-yellow or yellow-brown; the ornamentation is always hyaline or nearly so.
Melzer's Reaction: Not distinctive in most species but in some orange to red-orange.
Comments: Spores of Gautieria species are distinctive among fungi, but resemble those of some species in the mushroom genus Boletellus as illustrated by Pegler and Young (1981); Gautieria spores are always pale colored in contrast to the rusty brown to dark brown, ridged spores of Chamonixia species. Spores of this genus resemble those of the close relative Ramaria subgenus Ramaria.
View photos of Gautieria spores
Sporocarp Characters
Shape and Size: 1-8 cm broad, globose to subglobose or irregular, usually with a prominent rhizomorph emerging from the base.
Peridium: Lacking or fragile and ephemeral in most species, when present dingy white, yellowish, to brown, felty and fragile or membranous.
Gleba: With small to prominent, labyrinthine chambers and a poorly to strongly developed, usually cartilaginous columella; the cinnamon to dark cinnamon color of the spores in mass dominate the color of the gleba of mature specimens.
Odor: Not distinctive or merely mushroomy in young specimens but, by full maturity (and especially at warm temperatures), often becoming offensive, ranging from nauseous to sweet-oily to sewer-gaseous.
View photos of Gautieria sporocarps