Small Moss Oysterling

Appearance

Cap - 0.1 - 1cmm across, "cyphelloid and radially symmetric or more often eccentrically fixed and bilaterally symmetric, mostly pendant", sometimes deeply cup-shaped to bell-shaped but more often shallowly formed, "when on robust mosses such as Polytrichum, quite often slightly ascending and reflexed", nearly approaching a stemmed form but always with the spore-bearing surface delimited by a sterile margin, the margin incurved, usually becoming crisped and uneven when old; "grayish-white to isabelline" (Overholts 1940) or brownish gray (Reid 1963) to buff; moist to dry, smooth to rugose [wrinkled] in large specimens, (Redhead), 0.5 -1cm across, when old still like inverted bowl ("cyphella-like"), almost round, suspended at crown from various mosses; gray-whitish, (Moser), grayish white to grayish brown, fading quickly on drying (Trudell)
Flesh - thin, delicate, or more flesh; colored as cap (Redhead)
Gills - spore bearing surface "smooth initially, often becoming only slightly rugose, usually more developed eccentrically, either with more or less radially disposed branched and forked veins with frequent anastomoses and sinose intervenose branches, or more elaborately reticulate-poroid with less development in the marginal areas"; colored as cap or slightly paler, (Redhead), darker veined-netted (Moser)
Stem - "The basal mycelium usually only a small weft but in more robust ascending forms sometimes sheathing moss leaves and stems in a tight bundle resembling a pseudostipe" (Redhead)

Naming

Cantharellus retirugis (Bull.) Fr. synonym
UKSI
Cantharellus retirugus (Bull.) Fr. synonym
UKSI
Dictyolus retirugus
Dictyolus retirugus
Leptoglossum retirugum
Cyphella galeata
Merulius membranaceus
Leptoglossum retiruge
Leptoglossum conchatum
Helvella membranacea

Habitat

on mosses, tree trunks, sometimes on twigs or leaves near mosses