W. americana
| Wynnea americana | |
|---|---|
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Fungi |
| Division: | Ascomycota |
| Class: | Pezizomycetes |
| Order: | Pezizales |
| Family: | Sarcoscyphaceae |
| Genus: | Wynnea |
| Species: | W. americana |
| Binomial name | |
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Wynnea americana Thaxt. (1905) |
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Wynnea americana, commonly known as moose antlers or rabbit ears, is a species of fungus in the family Sarcoscyphaceae. This uncommon inedible species is recognizable by its spoon-shaped or rabbit-ear shaped fruit bodies that may reach up to 13 cm (5.1 in) tall. It has dark brown and warty outer surfaces, while the fertile spore-bearing inner surface is orange to pinkish to reddish brown. The fruit bodies grow clustered together from large underground masses of compacted mycelia known as sclerotia. In eastern North America, where it is typically found growing in the soil underneath hardwood trees, it is found from New York to Michigan south to Mexico. The species has also been collected from Costa Rica, India, and Japan.
Wynnea americana is distinguished from other species in the genus Wynnea by the pustules (small bumps) on the outer surface, and microscopically by the large asymmetrical longitudinally ribbed spores with a sharply pointed tip. The spores are made in structures called asci, which have thickened rings at one end that are capped by a hinged structure known as the operculum—a lid that is opened when spores are to be released from the ascus.
Wynnea americana was first described in 1905 by American mycologist Roland Thaxter. Thaxter found several clusters of fruit bodies in Burbank, Tennessee in 1888, and believed the fungus to be Wynnea macrotis, one of the first identified species of genus Wynnea. An 1896 visit to the same location as well as Cranberry, North Carolina yielded further specimens. This time, however, Thaxter noticed that the fruit bodies were not attached to humus, as expected, but rather to "a large, irregularly lobed, brown, firm, tuber-like body buried a few inches deep in the humus." Microscopic examination of this structure and other tissue of the fruit body convinced Thaxter the material was sufficiently different from known Wynnea species to justify the creation of a new species. Both the Tennessee and the North Carolina specimens were used as syntypes to describe the taxon; the Tennessee specimen has since been designated the lectotype (the name-bearing type specimen). In 1946, French mycologist Marcelle Louise Fernande Le Gal determined that the ascus in W. americana was similar in structure to those species he placed in the suboperculate series.
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