Campanella/Tetrapyrgos/Metacampanella/etc. - click to expand
Typically thought of as pleurotoid with off-center or missing stems with rudimentary
cross-veined folds, but also contains the former 'Marasmiellus' candidus,
also found on stems. These genera do not belong in the Marasmiaceae as currently defined,
but the
Marasmiaceae could be expanded to include this family and the Omphalotaceae.
The paper that segregated and erected Metacampanella noted that if the three
genera in this section are kept apart, a half dozen more genera will need to
be described. It might be better to combine them into one genus,
Campanella, instead of necessitating the creation of many more obscure, tiny
genera. You might want to think of all these as Campanella.
Species mentioned:
Marasmiellus candidus, tricolor. Tetrapyrgos subdendrophora.
'Marasmiellus'
sp. 'candidus-CA01' -
white marasmioid turning pink in age, with a black-bottomed stem,
found on sticks. The nomenclature is a mess. Our mushroom needs a new
genus name. Marasmiellus has gone away, replaced by the older genus Collybiopsis,
which this species is not a part of. The problem is that this species, along
with a few others from different parts of the world, each need their own genus, unless everything in this section is
combined into a larger concept of Campanella and we deprecate
Tetrapyrgos and Metacampanella. If they all end up being
considered part of Campanella, Marasmiellus candidus EU must be given a new species epithet as
Campanella candida is already taken. Our DNA is 2% different than EU DNA.
Eastern NA might have their own unique species too.
Metacampanella tricolor EU -
a 2-gene study showed that this is inside Metacampanella, even though
my ITS-only tree cannot tell. It is similar to the above
species, but with a somewhat textured cap and
growing on
the ground in fens (thus the stems will not curve). It was not known
before it was sequenced in OR and CA. Our
sequences, and EU type area sequences, all varied from each other by over 1%
in ITS, but then a CA sequence was found with ambiguous locations that unite
all the different sequences, so it may well be that we have the real species
here.

'Marasmiellus' sp. 'candidus-CA01' © Daniel Winkler and Danny
Miller, Metacampanella tricolor © Connor Dooley
Metacampanella subdendrophora BC
(=Tetrapyrgos subdendrophora) -
<1 cm across growing on grasses and herbaceous stems with cross-veined rudimentary
gills and a tiny off-centre stem. It can stain dark bluish
grey and the flesh is somewhat gelatinous. ITS suggested this
could be considered in its own genus outside of both Campanella and Tetrapyrgos,
and a 2-gene ITS and LSU study gave more evidence to that possibility. The new genus was going to be
called Pseudocampanella but they decided on Metacampanella.
However, that very paper showed that Campanella will need to be split
much more unless everything in this section is considered to be part of an
expanded Campanella, which may be the more elegant solution.
Metacampanella washingtonensis n.p.
("veiny") - very similar but larger, >1 cm across, probably
even more cross-veined and usually without a stem, growing on
wood. This has the same ITS sequence as the former species and can't be
distinguished by that gene.

Metacampanella subdendrophora © Fred Rhoades, M.
washingtonensis n.p. "veiny"
© Noah Siegel