Grassland clavarioid fungi of Great Britain: Species #1
Clavaria fragilis agg. ~ White Spindles
This post is part of an ongoing series. You can read the introductory post here.
Clavaria fragilis agg. ~ White Spindles
ID difficulty rating: ⭐
I think, when you find it growing in clumps like this, Clavaria fragilis agg. is fairly unmistakable. The pure white colour and its fragile nature are distinctive.
I encountered the specimen in the photograph, above, in my local churchyard this morning where it is growing in more profusion than I have seen in previous years.
I didn’t realise that Clavaria fragilis is considered to be an aggregate species concept (?), until I was looking at the list of clavarioid fungi in the JNCC Guidelines recently (‘agg.’ implies a cryptic complex of species: difficult or impossible to tell apart based on observable macro- and micro- characters, such cryptic species can often only be differentiated by DNA analysis).
Looking at the discussion in ‘I FUNGHI CLAVARIOIDI in Italia’ by Paolo Franchi & Mauro Marchetti (2021), they seem to be saying that the current scientific consensus is that “the species is only one, with a very variable morphology and chromatism often due to climatic and environmental causes” (via Google Translate). So make of that what you will.
It’s interesting to note that the original description of Clavaria fragilis was published by Theodoro Holmskjold in 1790, in his ‘Beata Ruris Otia Fungis Danicis’ [Happy Resting Periods in the Country Studying Danish Fungi]. Holmskjold had a unique and very artistic style which you can see here in his illustration of Clavaria fragilis.
