Hypocrea and Its Conidial Form Trichoderma

e6filmuser

Many fungi which rarely from fruiting bodies have been described and given species names. These used to be called the Fungi Imperfecti: now they are called Anamorphs. They produce asexual spores, in this case Conidia. The more familiar sexual fruiting bodies are Teleomorphs.

Trichoderma is a huge genus with hundreds of species. It used to be though that few of them produced teleomorphs but recent research has revised that view.

Here we has at least one species of teleomorph, the brown or greyish lumps with many dark speckles, in close association with blue-green anamorph Trichoderma.

It is most likely that the brownish teleomorphs are Hypocea rufa with its anamorph Trichoderma viride. The greyish ones are clearly of the same genus but are probably another species of Hypocrea which must have its (indistinguishable without microscropy) anamorph Trichoderma present.

I am not going to attempt to identify the species present but present the image of a rare sighting.

If anyone fancies some light reading:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13225-011-0088-y

These were on the cut end of an upturned willow log, so on top, but shaded and provided with a constant microclimate by a thin slice of wood from a partial second cut which had become detached. This log had been in place for several years.

The magnification gives a FOV 35mm or 7mm wide.

Olympus EM-1 (manual mode), Olympus 4/3 50mm f2 macro, f8, twin flash hand-held.

Olympus EM-1 (manual mode), Laowa 25mm f2.8 2.5x-5x ultra-macro at f8, triple TTL flash hand-held.

Harold