Alloclavaria purple (Alloclavaria purpurea) photo and description

Alloclavaria purple (Alloclavaria purpurea)

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• Clavaria purpurea
• Clavaria purpurea

Fruit body: narrow and long. From 2,5 to 10 centimeters in height, up to 14 is indicated as a maximum. 2-6 mm wide. Cylindrical to almost spindle shape, usually with a slightly pointed tip. Unbranched. Sometimes somewhat flattened or, as it were, “with a groove”, it can be longitudinally furrowed. Dry, soft, brittle. Color can be dull purple to purplish brown, fading to light ocher with age. Other possible shades are described as: “isabella colors” – creamy brownish at the break; “color of clay”, at the base as “army brown” – “army brown”. Shaggy at the base, with a whitish “fluff”. Fruiting bodies usually grow in bunches, sometimes quite dense, up to 20 pieces in one bunch-cluster.

Some sources describe the leg separately: poorly developed, lighter.

Pulp: whitish, purple, thin.

Smell and taste: almost indistinguishable. The smell is described as “soft, pleasant”.

Chemical reactions: absent (negative) or not described.

spore powder: White.

Споры 8.5-12 x 4-4.5 µm, ellipsoid, smooth, smooth. Basidia 4-spore. Cystidia up to 130 x 10 µm, cylindrical, thin-walled. There are no clamp connections.

Ecology: traditionally considered saprobiotic, but there are suggestions that it is mycorrhizal or related to mosses. Grows in densely packed clusters under coniferous trees (pine, spruce), often in mosses. summer and autumn (also winter in warmer climates)

Summer and autumn (also winter in warmer climates). Widely distributed in North America. Findings were recorded in Scandinavia, China, as well as in the temperate forests of the Federation and European countries.

Unknown. The mushroom is not poisonous, at least no data on toxicity can be found. Some sources even come across some recipes and cooking recommendations, however, the reviews are so vague that it is completely incomprehensible what kind of mushroom they actually tried to cook there, it seems that it was not only Clavaria purple, it was generally something then, as they say, “not from this series”, that is, not a horn, not a clavulina, not a clavary.

Alloclavaria purpurea is considered such an easily identified fungus that it is difficult to confuse it with something else. We probably won’t need to use a microscope or a DNA sequencer to successfully identify a fungus. Clavaria zollingeri and Clavulina amethyst are vaguely similar, but their coral fruiting bodies are at least “moderately” branched (and often quite heavily branched), in addition, they appear in deciduous forests, and Alloclavaria purpurea likes conifers.

At the microscopic level, the fungus is easily and confidently identified by the presence of cystidia, which are not found in closely related species in Clavaria, Clavulina and Clavulinopsis.

Photo: Natalia Chukavova