Species flashcards

Description

Description: Branched, medium-sized, reddish-yellow mushroom. When young, the stem is white, the branches are flesh-colored, the repeatedly branched branch tips are lemon yellow.

Fruiting body: From one base, many repeatedly branched, winding branches emerge. Size 4-15 cm. The branches are multicolored, reddish-yellow, pinkish-yellow, red in places, the branch tips are yellow. In old age, the whole mushroom or only in places fades to yellowish-white.

Hymenium: Located at the small tips, darkening on injury, turning dark burgundy or black.

Flesh: Rigidly tough, fibrous, hard, but brittle, white. Smell and taste: Good-tasting, finally slightly bitterish. Smell good.

Spore: Orange-yellow, ochre; 8-15 x 4-6μm; elongated ellipsoid, rough, coarse surface.

Occurrence: In forests, on the ground, in summer and autumn, but only common in certain places.

Edibility: Slightly poisonous, laxative.

Confusion: Very similar to the yellow coral, from which faded specimens are barely distinguishable. Its thinner, more winding branches, reddish color in places and lighter yellow branch tips are not sufficiently reliable differences. Besides, there are several rarer, not only yellow, reddish-yellow coral mushroom species, among which there are also harmful, even poisonous ones, such as the rare gray coral mushroom.

Note: The Ramaria name comes from the words Ram - branch, and aria - has, arranged. Formosa means beautiful form, shapely.

Species description: In 1797, Christiaan Hendrik Persoon described it scientifically and gave it the name Clavaria formosa. In 1888, Lucien Quélet transferred it to the Ramaria genus, giving it the currently accepted name, Ramaria formosa.

Taxonomy

1. PhylumBasidiomycota
2. ClassAgaricomycetes
3. OrderGomphales
4. FamilyRamariaceae
5. GenusRamaria

• Species: formosa
• Described by: (Pers.) Quélet
• Hungarian name: cifra korallgomba
• Lifestyle: mycorrhizal
• Edibility: poisonous