Hi, A friend of mine called me to show me a strange fungus growing in his garden on the base of the trunk of a Sambucus nigra tree.It is soft and o n slicing there is a dark brown core made of a mass of spores along a reticulate wall. It should correspond to a gasteromycete and it features some unique characters.
The spores are reddish-brown variable in size and shape (globular, lemon-shaped, egg-shaped or balloon-shaped, some with a distinct short stipe), thick-walled, smooth, not warted or spinose (as most gasteromycetes are) The spores seem to be formed via blastic-synchronous reproduction, like grapes on a bunch. The cuticle of the sporocarp is fibrous (fur-like) pale yellow ending in reddish-brown tips.
Scent mushroomy, but neither wow-pleasant nor putrid, like faint mushroom soup!
It is some sort of Melanogaster but the spores are quite weird and there seems to be no basidia involved.
I have the micrographs in the other camera and will add soon.
I was thinking something like Malanogaster
