Mushroom Trivia
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flesh

Terms discussed: context, contextual hyphae, convergent, divergent, parallel, trama, tramal hyphae



There are two terms referring to the flesh of the fruiting body. Context refers to the flesh as seen with the naked eye, and its most common characteristics are color (original and after bruising) and texture. Trama refers to the flesh as seen under a microscope, and its characters are those of the hyphae that make it up.

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Trama almost always refers to the trama of the gills or tubes, and this should be assumed unless the source specifically says otherwise. Some works even say "tramal hyphae" to refer to the microscopic features of the gills, and "contextual hyphae" to refer to microscopic features of the cap flesh.

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Image of Agaricaceae from Eugen Gramberg (1913) Pilze unserer Heimat
Agaricaceae
This picture shows a cross-section of a gill, with the gill edge at the bottom of the picture and the cap somewhere above the top of the picture. If the gill trama seems to have grown spreading out from the center of the gill (as in the picture), the trama is said to be divergent.

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If, on the other hand, the trama seems to have grown from the surface of the gill into the center, it is said to be convergent. The Amanitas and boletes have divergent gill trama; the Plutaceae are the only ones with convergent trama.

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Image of Odontia from Jean Louis Émile Boudier (1904 - 1909) Icones mycologicae ou iconographie des champignons de France, principalement Discomycètes
Odontia
If the gill trama is basically all mixed up, without showing a clear pattern, it is called interwoven.


Image of Macrotyphula from Jean Louis Émile Boudier (1904 - 1909) Icones mycologicae ou iconographie des champignons de France, principalement Discomycètes
Macrotyphula
If the gill trama is more or less parallel, then it is called (surprise!) parallel.

The trama of most fungi is either interwoven or parallel (or something in between).

 

 


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