Xylaria cubensis [Xylocoremium flabelliforme form]

This club-shaped species of Xylaria is fairly common. It grows directly from the wood of decaying hardwood logs, and features a coppery brown surface (before it eventually turns black). Under the microscope it has fairly small spores that usually lack the "germ slits" common to many other Xylaria species.

The "anamorph," or asexual stage, of Xylaria cubensis looks quite a bit different from its sexual stage. Though the anamorph was recognized previously by some as a separate species, "Xylocoremium flabelliforme," current taxonomic rules require sexual and asexual stages to be treated as one taxonomic entity. The anamorph appears in winter, spring, and early summer, and looks a bit like soggy cotton candy on a tiny stick.

Description:

Fruiting Body: 2–8 cm tall; 0.5–1.5 cm across; shaped more or less like a club, with a rounded tip; surface coppery brown, becoming blackish with maturity; becoming minutely pimpled with perithecia and shallowly wrinkled with maturity, but not developing deep fissures and cracks; pseudostem short or almost nonexistent.

Anamorph   0.5–2.5 cm high; up to 1 cm wide; at first narrowly club-shaped with a black to whitish surface; apex becoming expanded into a tightly to loosely lobed crown with a finely granular, white to pinkish or pale orange surface; base swollen where attached to the wood, covered with fine black fuzz.

REFERENCES: Michael Kuo