Scutellinia scutellata (The "Eyelash Cup")

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by Michael Kuo

Have you ever tried to take a nap on a log? Your friends are somewhere off in the woods, hunting morels. You have been hunting morels for days on end. You have found more morels than you ever thought possible. You have found so many morels that, unbelievable as it may seem, you are bored with finding morels. You're miles from the car. Your feet are tired. Just curl up on this log, and take a nice nap.

You doze for a few moments, then suddenly wake up and find you have turned your head: your nose now rests squarely in a knot-hole. The knot-hole is filled with decay and dirt--and a bunch of tiny orange things with ants crawling on them.

I probably never would have found Scutellinia scutellata if Nature hadn't shoved it up my nose. The "Eyelash Cup" is very, very small--and if you click the top illustration for the enlargement, you'll see how it got its common name.

The Eyelash Cups form a species cluster, and many of the species differ only microscopically. Scutellinia scutellata is described below, followed by comments on some of the other species. None of the species is large enough to consider for the table, and edibility is not known for most of them.

Sadly, the letters in Scutellinia scutellata could be rearranged by a serial killer to spell "I'll cut acute aliens last."

Description:

Ecology: Saprobic on rotted wood, or on damp soil nearby; growing gregariously or in clusters; spring through fall; widely distributed in North America.

Fruiting Body: Cup shaped to broadly cup shaped, minute to 1.5 cm across; fertile surface ("top" or "inner" surface) scarlet red to bright orange, smooth; sterile surface ("under" or "outer" surface) brownish or pale orangish, covered with tiny dark hairs; the margin with longer, eyelash-like, dark hairs that have forked bases; without a stem; flesh thin and insubstantial.

Microscopic Features: Spores 17-19 x 10-14 µ elliptical; rough; with several oil droplets. Asci 300 x 25 µ.

REFERENCES: (Linnaeus ex Fries) Lambotte. (Smith & Weber, 1981; Arora, 1986; Phillips, 1991/2005; Lincoff, 1992.) Herb. Kuo 05210301, 07220310.

Scutellinia umbrorum is dark to bright red, grows on wood or soil, and has larger spores (23-24 x 12-14 µ) that contain one oil droplet.

Species of Cheilymenia are smaller than Scutellinia scutellata, grow terrestrially in soil, ash or dung, have paler hairs, and have spores without oil droplets.

Further Online Information:

Scutellinia scutellata at MykoWeb
Scutellinia scutellata at Fungi of Poland

Differs from Scutellinia scutellata as follows:

Cite this page as:

Kuo, M. (2003, June). Scutellinia scutellata (The eyelash cup). Retrieved from the MushroomExpert.Com Web site: http://www.mushroomexpert.com/scutellinia_scutellata.html