Cornuvia serpula (Wigand) Rostaf.

Song, Wen-Long, Lin, Di, Li, Min, Du, Que & Chen, Shuang-Lin, 2022, Four new records of myxomycetes from China, Phytotaxa 567 (2), pp. 181-188 : 182-183

Cornuvia serpula (Wigand) Rostaf. , in Fuckel, Jahrb. Nassauischen Vereins Naturk. 27–28: 76, 1873 ( Fig. 1 )

Fruiting bodies are decentralized subspheroidal or ellipsoidal sessile sporangia or short plasmodiocarps, with a diameter of 0.3 mm, shining golden yellow. Peridium membranous, thin, delicate, smooth, and pale yellow. Capillitium a flaccid, loose network of yellow threads 3.0–5.0 μm in diameter, marked with well-defined ring-like thickenings clustered at intervals or irregularly scattered, occasionally or often with a large number of free ends. Spores yellow in mass, pale yellow by transmitted light, spherical, coarsely reticulate, the half surface has 7–12 meshes, 9.0–12.0 μm in diameter.

Specimen examined:— CHINA. Hubei Province: Wufeng County, Houhe Nature Reserve , 30°04′47″N, 110°32′39″E, elevation 1238 m, on dead leaves of Davidia involucrata , collected on 27 Oct 2019 , Min Li , cultured in moist chamber on 8 Nov 2019 , harvested on 29 Dec 2019 ( HFNNU 4093 ) .

Distribution:— Germany ( Bjørneckaer & Klinge 1963), Denmark, United Kingdom, United States, India, Japan, France, Tanzania, and Costa Rica (Global Biodiversity Information Facility, GBIF), Mexico ( Estrada-Torres et al. 2015), and China (this study).

Comments:— The genus Cornuvia and C. serpula are reported for the first time in China, and was found in moist chamber culture of litter collected from Davidia . involucrata in Houhe Nature Reserve, Hubei Province in autumn. C. serpula is a small sessile sporangium or plasmodiocarp, with well-defined ring-like thickenings on the capillitium and reticulated spores. This species was originally assigned by Wigand to the genus Arcyria ( Naturk 1873) . However, it was later classified as Cornuvia by Rostafinski due to its unique combination of characteristics. The spores of C. serpula are larger, with a diameter of 9.0–12.0 μm and coarsely reticulate in this study, while the spores of this species were 10.0–11.6 μm in diameter and 9–14 meshes on the half side in America ( Rojas & Calvo 2014). But, many of the spores had 7 meshes on the half side in our specimens. The microenvironment of C. serpula in this study is similar to that reported by Seraoui (2008), accumulated litter of leaves and twigs of Quercus cf. ilex .

Figures

FIGURE 1. Morphological characters of Cornuvia serpula. a. Sporangia on litter. b. Capillitium with ring-like structure. c. Reticulate spores (LM). d. Capillitium ornamented with ring-like thickenings (arrow, SEM). e, f. Reticulate spores (SEM). Scale bars: a = 1 mm, b, c = 20 μm, d–f = 1 μm.