Brefeldia maxima

Brefeldia maxima, fruiting bodies

Brefeldia maxima is a slime mold species and the only representative of the genus Brefeldia from the order of Stemonitida. It is known from Europe, America and Asia and can reach extraordinary sizes. It is named after the mycologists Oscar Brefeld.

Features

The Plasmodium is white and can be enormously large, a copy found in 1999 was estimated at a weight of 20 kilograms. The fruiting bodies are cushion-like, dark brown to black Aethalien, reaching a total size of up to 30, rarely up to 61 centimeters in diameter and 2 centimeters in height. They are composed of individual, 0.5 to 0.8 mm in diameter large Sporokarpen.

The Hypothallus stands out among the Aethalium, shimmering silvery, is brownish in transmitted light but transparent. From it, the ramifications of up to 3 mm wider columella extends into many single strands or in the manner of a brush up. It shimmers silvery, dark brown to almost black in transmitted light. The peridium is formed on the surface of Aethaliums an early frail bark ( cortex) with pflastersteinartigem relief, inside it is subject to change and shred -like elongated, forming a Pseudocapillitium. In transmitted light it is brownish and dark veined and pleated.

The only weakly fortified, nearly horizontally arranged scalp grows out of the columella or the Pseudocapillitium. It is brown to dark brown in diameter from 0.5 to 2 microns thick, on the lugs it is funnel-shaped, and in between it has net-like extensions on. The chambers of the network are blistered and 20 to 80 microns long and 15-25 microns wide.

The spores are dark brown in mass, brown in transmitted light, in the field of germ opening brighter. Your walls are finely warty, round to broadly elliptic, and measure 9-12 microns.

Dissemination

The style is from Europe ( Germany ), America ( USA [ especially in the Northeast ], Canada, Panama, Argentina ) and Asia ( Northern Pakistan ) are known. They colonized leaves, grass, shrubs and stumps of deciduous trees.

Systematics and history of research

The species was first described in 1848 as reticularia maxima of Elias Magnus Fries, 1873 presented Józef Tomasz Rostafiński it in its own genus, whose only it is.

Evidence

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