Public Note:
[RHP] Fruit bodies up to 80 x 4 mm, simple clubs, solitary to gregarious but not cespitose or fasciculate, "at first grey, pale blue-grey, turning to pale argillaceous with age" (teste Horak annotation). Stipe rounded at base, with no basal mycelial pad, terete, appearing silky, up to 30 x 3 mm, clearly distinguishable from club. Club terete to longitudinally wrinkled or sulcate, appearing waxy; apex rounded. Tramal hyphae of club 3-12 um diam., inflated, clampless, thin-walled, hyaline, free, parallel. Subhymenium extensive, pseudoparenchymatous. Hymenium thickening; basidia 90-105 x 13-15 um, clavate, with a long, equal stalk portion and abruptly flaring apex, asymmetrically bifurcate to clamped; contents obscurely refringent when mature to granular; sterigmata 4, up to 10 jxm long, curved ascending to curved-divergent. Spores 8.3-10.4 x 7.9-9.7 um (E = 1.00-1.16; Em = 1.09; Lm = 9.58 umm), globose to subglobose, thinwalled, smooth; contents uniguttulate when mature; hilar appendix short, broad, papillate. COMMENTARY: Again, I have only two specimens, but also a good photograph, colour sketch, and notes. Superficially, fruit bodies must resemble those of some Cordyceps, being very terete and straight. Colours are, of course, reminisent of Clavaria muscula (smaller spores, no argillaceous shades) and C. ardosiaca (higher Em value, no argillaceous shades, and usually fasciculate fruit bodies).
[JAC] Collections: 1) North Island: Auckland, Mill Bay, 6.vii.81, coll. RHP, EH, no. 1064 (holotype, ZT; isotypes, PDD, TENN); 2) WR, Walker's Bush, 30.vi.65, coll .Dingley, RFRM, no. 77 (PDD). Dries material appears brown. Microscopically quite different to ardosiaca/musculospinulosa because it does not have basidia/spores with crystalline refractive content and the spores are much more globose. The hymenium shows many attached spores so I suspect this material is immature and the spore measurement probably less than it should be. Nevertheless Q will be different (my measurements including apiculus) length=7.1–9.9µm (µ=8.4, σ=0.68), width=5.6–7.6µm (µ=6.5, σ=0.48), Q=1.1–1.5µm (µ=1.31, σ=0.11), n=20. So for ardosiaca L=12(10), Q=1.5(1.3), musculospinulosa L=11(10), Q=1.5(1.2), plumbeoargillacea L=8(10), Q=1.3(1)
J.A. Cooper, Nov. 2017