Horn Of Plenty

Morphology

Common Name

Horn Of Plenty

Scientific Name

Craterellus cornucopoides

Morphological Description


















Growing Body: An underground sepate (divided by partitions) mycelium of interconnecting hyphae (branching filaments) forming a cotton wool mass, which lives in ectotrophic symbiosis with Fagus Sylvatica and Quercus rubra. It is perennial and reproduces by an above ground fruiting body which disperses spores by wind. It occurs in gregarious or clustered groups, locally abundant but occasional.

Fruit: Its fruiting body is a fleshy trumpet shaped fruit that is a small regular funnel to large hollow fruit with contorted or folded and torn margins composed of a cap and a stipe. Inrolled when young. Colour dark greyish brown to almost black and scaly. Smooth lower surface of stipe and cap are pruinose - with bloom. Cap 3-8 cm wide hymenephore (composed of ridges of veins and wrinkles). Hymenin (spore cover) is on the surface of true reduced gills. Stem/Stipe 5 - 12cm blackish grey, hollow. Flesh: tough with an earthy smell and spicy flavour. Turns to colour of spores below when ripe.

Spores: Spore powder is white, yellow or ochre brown. Individual spores hyaline, colourless and transparent, grow on basidia with two sterigma. Chemical test: spores non-amyloid = is made of certain cell walls which causes them to turn blue in Melzer's reagent.

Collated by James M. Burton as part of H.N.D. course at Pencoed
Agricultural College. Taxanomical information correct as of 06:06:97.