On the clavarioid Ramaria stricta (Fr.) Quél. in Borneo

I recorded this species from Mt Kinabalu, North Borneo, in typical form and as var. concolor (Corner, 1970: 259). One copious collection of var. stricta, namely RSNB 5742, I distributed to several herbaria. The fruit-bodies in this case had grown in large numbers, in places almost caespitose, along a fallen rotten trunk in Trigonobalanus-forest at 1600 m; they were old, but not effete and in many the branches, with thickened hymenium, had sagged and become divaricate (Corner, 1970: pl. 3). The interest of the collection was clear at the time. The second collection, RSNB 8475, consisted of younger fruit-bodies with the characteristic fastigiate branching. Now two duplicates of the first collection, RSNB 5742, have been studied by Petersen (1975), who refers that at the Bureau of Plant Industry (Maryland) to Ramaria africana Petersen (l.e.: 110) and that at Leiden to R. polypus Corner (l.c.: 120). In both cases he overlooks the field-notes which I had published in 1970, and they show that, with yellow tips to the branches, vinescent tissue, and fragrance of aniseed, the collection does not belong with either of those species. When I run down the collection in Petersen’s key (1975: 104), it comes to R. stricta var. alba (which it is not) or R. stricta var. stricta. It may be supposed that I had confused two or three species at the time of collection, but I clearly recall the occasion and am certain that this was not the case. In fact I do not recall any instance where two or more species of clavarioid fungi had grown intermixed. Hence I conclude that the fruitbodies of RSNB 5742 bore the two kinds of spore by which Petersen seeks to distinguish R. africana (1975: 137, fig. 10) and R. polypus (1975: 139, fig. 15), though he is not definite on this point, and that fruit-bodies macroscopically identical with R. stricta produce spores which differ from those that Petersen regards as typical (Petersen, 1967: figs. 3d, e). To me this indicates the slight variations in spore that may occur in a species of such wide distribution. In distinguishing R. africana, R. kisantuensis, R. molleriana, and R. polypus, Petersen introduces a character which seems to me very dubious. He separates the first two because they have the slender skeletal hyphae of the mycelial subiculum or rhizomorphs also in the tissue at the base of the stem of the fruit-body, and they are absent from the base in the other two species. The state in R. stricta is not described by Petersen (1975) but it agrees with that of R. molleriana (Corner, 1950). Now the base of the stem is a transitional region from rhizomorph or subiculum to the fruitbody and it is generally impossible to decide exactly where one begins and the other stops. In the transition skeletal hyphae of the rhizomorph variously intrude into the beginning of the stem, as the carry-over of one construction to another; in old fruit-bodies the mycelial hyphae, with skeletals, may extend up, over, and into the stem. Hence I have avoided this region for a diagnostic purpose; many collections, indeed, do not have the feature because the fruit-bodies had been torn off the wood. I note that this dimitic state is not that of Ramaria subgen. Lentoramaria ser. Dimiticae in which the skeletal hyphae occur throughout the fruit-body.