Fantastic Fungi Featurette: Specimen #12: Jelly Fungus

Figure 1. Exidia saccharina before collection.

Name: Exidia saccharina

Family: Exidiaceae

Collection Date: September 13, 2011

Habitat: On a dry, thin tree branch.

Location: South Chagrin Reservation in Chagrin Falls, Ohio

Description: Fresh fungus is shaped like gelatinous, elastic wrinkled blobs on wood. Color can range from brown to orange-brown, when old it can form a brownish crust. It can be over 20cm across. Often found on conifer twigs. Most commonly found in Europe and America. Not edible.

Collector: Cara Tompot

Key Used: Arora, D. (1979). Mushrooms Demystified. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press.

Keying Steps:

Key to the Major Groups of Fleshy Fungi

Basidiomycetes Pg 52.

Fruiting body variously shaped (with or without cap), but always gelatinous or very rubbery; usually growing on wood. Jelly fungi p 669.

Key to Tremellales and Allies:

1b. Not as above- (above: fruiting body brightly colored (yellow, orange, pink, red, or greenish) when fresh, but sometimes losing its color in rainy weather or old age); fruiting body white, grayish, black, reddish-purple, brown, yellow-brown, etc.

9b. Not as above- (above: fruiting body translucent to whitish, grayish, or brownish, with a cap (and usually a stalk), the underside of the cap lined with tiny spines or “teeth.”); underside of the cap lacking minute spines or “teeth.”

10b. Not as above- (above: fruiting body tough, erect, and usually branched (coral-like), white or pallid; found mainly on ground under hardwoods in eastern North America.); usually found on wood or plants.

12b. Not as above- (above: Fruiting body black (or nearly black) when fresh)(but fruiting body may be dark brown and /or may blacken as it dries out.)

13a. Frequently roughened spore-bearing surface and sausage shaped spores. Exidia sp p. 673.

**That key failed to go any further in the classification of my fungus, so I looked online for a key specifically of Exidia.

Next Key Used: Roberts, P. (2009). British Fungi Keys. British Mycological Society. Retrieved from <http://www.fieldmycology.net/FRDBI/..%5Cgbchklst%5Ckey.asp?KeyID=9 >.

Key to Exidia - a key from Peter Roberts:

1b. Fruiting body distinctly colored, orange, brown or black.