Asterophora lycoperdoides

This is a key to gilled mushrooms, that is, mushrooms having a definite cap with a fertile surface consisting of gills. The fruiting body usually also has a stem, although that may be lateral or absent (usually, then, the mushroom is growing from wood). You can use this key to identify mushrooms that you find.

Fruiting body containing fibers (usually in the stalk)

Spore print "light-colored": white or buff, sometimes tinged with pink or tan. Greenish and (except for the Russulales) yellow spore prints also go here
Stalk fibrous, not fracturing like a piece of chalk

None of the special features distinguishing the other white-spored genera:
Gills not free, as in the Lepiotas and Amanitas
Basidia not extra-long, as in the Hygrophoraceae
Spores smooth, except for Lentinellus

Cap less than an inch across
Growing on other fungi, usually on their blackened and squishy remains

Shaped like a normal mushroom, though perhaps with very poorly developed gills and stalk
Cap gradually disintegrating into a powdery mass of chlamydospores

Asterophora lycoperdoides     (Bulliard: Mérat) Ditmar: Fries

Here are the characters that distinguish this species from the others in its group. For its more general characters, see higher up on the page.
If there's just a few words or a microscopic feature here, a more thorough description can be found above.

Diagnosis

• Resembling a puffball when young: gills usually contorted, thick
  
• Entire fruiting body originally white or whitish
  
• Cap becoming misshapen and covered with brown powder as its cells grow thick-walled and detach themselves from each other, becoming chlamydospores

• Chlamydospores round, brownish, 12-20 µm across, with many random protrusions

Comments

The brown powder is the chlamydospores
The host is unusually well-preserved in this picture: usually it is not only blackened, but fallen in on itself and semi-liquified as well


 

 

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