Dendrocollybia racemosa

Dendrocollybia racemosa (Branched Collybia) formerly known as Collybia racemosa is a small gilled mushroom with white spores. Often it is found entirely buried thus is seldom encountered/rarely seen. Its stipe is 3-8cm long and has numerous short lateral side branches especially the lower two thirds. What is interesting about this mushroom is that its side branches can produce asexual spores (conidia) giving the mushroom another way to reproduce by cloning itself. It seems to favor old or decayed/blackened mushrooms and sometimes originates from a sclerotium which is a knot or tuber of hyphae.The sclerotia provides a resting stage for periodic fruiting of the mushroom. This is the first year in which we have seen this mushroom in the Cambria Fiscalini Ranch Preserve and it has been a prolific year as well for another small Collybia namely C.cirrhata which also colonizes on decayed mushrooms. The previous mushroom fruiting season was very prolific and I am speculating that there was plenty of old fungal material for these mushrooms to grow on.