Calyptella longipes (Cooke & Massee) W.B.Cooke

Common name: None.

Description: Forms long, white structures that resemble an old-fashioned tobacco pipe or a cow's horn. The opening of the horn or pipe is always downwards as the spores are produced on the interior of the horn and then shed directly into the air. The fruiting bodies are up to 2.5 cm long and can be up to 1.5 cm in diameter at the mouth, although they are generally much smaller. The white flesh of the fungus is very thin (usually less than 1 mm). Inside the horn there are tiny ridges which correspond to the gills of normal toadstools.

The spores measure 710 × 67 µm and are broadly ellipsoidal to subglobose, smooth and colourless but white in mass.

Substratum: Always on wood and usually in dense masses on fallen logs in subtropical or tropical rainforest.

Distribution: In Australia, known only from southern Queensland, but the species can be expected from similar rainforests in northern New South Wales. It is also known from Africa.

Notes: This species is actually a very highly modified gilled fungus that has lost its true stem and has used part of its cap to form a pseudostem. The tiny ridges inside the horn-like structure are all that is left of the original gills.

When fruiting prolifically, C. longipes can be so abundant as to completely hide the wood of the rainforest log on which it is growing. The species was first described from southern Queensland in 1892 by the English mycologists M.C.Cooke and G.Massee from material sent to them by the Queensland botanist F.M.Bailey but like many other fungal species, the original determination had been forgotten. The identity of the fungus was confirmed in 1996 (Mycologist 10(4):152, A.M.Young, An Australian species of Calyptella returns from obscurity.).