Flora of New Zealand Series

Clavarioid fungi often forming a lichenised association with the green alga Coccomyxa. Fruiting bodies to 4 cm tall and to 2 mm thick, simple or sparingly branched, white, pinkish, yellowish-ochre or orange, tough when wet, brittle when dry. Contextual hyphae parallel, tightly packed towards base of fruiting body, loosely arranged towards apex, thin or very slightly thick-walled, branched, anastomosing, clamped or unclamped, occasionally adglutinated, little inflated. Subhymenial hyphae parallel with contextual hyphae, thin-walled, relatively straight, producing basidia as side branches. Basidia short, ± stout, weakly sterigmate. Basidiospores ovoid or ellipsoid to elongate-ovoid or elongate-ellipsoid, thin-walled, aguttulate to multiguttulate or granular, smooth, white in prints.

Multiclavula, a genus of c. 13 described species in the family Clavariaceae [Petersen Am. Midl. Nat. 77: 205-221 (1967); Oberwinkler Dtsch. bot. Ges. N. F. 4: 152-153 (1970)] is a basidiolichen associated with green, or blue-green algae on soil or rotting wood. Two species are known from rotting wood in mountain beech forest east of the Main Divide in central South I., but the genus in New Zealand is still poorly known.