apothecium

Apothecium: This is wide; open saucer-shaped or cup shaped fruit body.

They are characterised by a cup-shaped apothecium which is often brightly coloured.

The excipulum, the tissue making up the walls of the apothecium, is thin and flexible.

The cup of the apothecium is lined with acsi, in which the ascospores are contained.

Viewed with a microscope, the wall of the apothecium is made of three tissue layers of roughly equal thickness.

The inner spore-bearing surface of the apothecium, the hymenium, is brightly colored, yellow to red, although the color will fade upon drying.

When hairs are present on the apothecium, they are fasciculate-made of bundles of cylindrical hyphae.

This species is characterized by having stiff brown hairs on the surface of the ectal excipulum, the outer layer of the apothecium.

The apothecium is an open, cuplike, or saucer-shaped sexual fungal fruiting body (ascocarp) containing asci.

Structure of Apothecium chiefly consist of 3 parts namely hymenium (upper concave surface), hypothecium and excipulum.

This fruiting body remains subterranean for most of the year but breaks the surface in the spring to form a creamy-grey cup (apothecium) up to 4.5 cm across and 3 cm tall.

The outer tissue layer of the apothecium, known as the ectal excipulum, has a delicate tomentose surface composed of hair-like, straight or sometimes coiled, smooth hyphae.

With many cup fungi, microscopic analysis of the anatomy and structure of the apothecium is necessary for accurate identification of species, or to help distinguish between related species that have a similar external appearance.

The closely related vulcan elf cup (Geopyxis vulcanalis) has a yellow apothecium, and may be distinguished microscopically by the paraphyses which lack the orange-brown granules characteristic of G. carbonaria.

The cup-like fruiting body (the apothecium) can assume a variety of forms: it may be shaped like an ear (auriculate), or a saddle; it may be convex or irregularly lobed and bent.

The orange disc (a deeper colour than the thallus) surface is concave initially but matures to convex; the apothecium rim also narrows giving the effect that the convex disc is spilling over it.

Fruiting in most species tends to be in late winter or early spring with fruiting bodies produced on the dead wood within which the mycelium grows, although in some cases the apothecium appears to arise from amongst moss or from the leaf-litter.

Apothecium contain cylindric to fusoid asci, of 35 to 38 m x 5.9 to 7.4 m. Ascospores are hyaline, fusoid, 0-1 septate, with a rounded end and an average size of 8.9 m (7.4 to 10.3) x 2.07 m (1.95 to 2.34).