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Clavariadelphus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Clavariadelphus
Clavariadelphus pistillaris
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Fungi
Division: Basidiomycota
Class: Agaricomycetes
Order: Gomphales
Family: Clavariadelphaceae
Genus: Clavariadelphus
Donk (1933)
Type species
Clavariadelphus pistillaris
(L.) Donk (1933)
Species
35 species
[1]

Clavariadelphus is a genus of fungi in the family Clavariadelphaceae in the order Gomphales.[2] Morphologically its members can be described as club fungi with simple, erect and unbranched basidiomata,[3] even if the clavarioid fungi are today not seen as a systematic group. Numbers of described and currently accepted species are constantly rising, this might be connected both to applied new techniques and due to previously understudied areas like China.[4][5] As of March 2026 there are, depending on the source, either 31,[6] 34[7] or 35 accepted species currently recognized.[1]

Description

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Macroscopic characters

The basidiomata are usually club-shaped (sometimes with deviations), unbranched and upright with a blunt to rounded,[3] sometimes more acute[5] apex, mature specimens can be slightly hollow, their trama is white, soft and spongy,[3] they have a medium to large size (from about 4 cm[5] to about 20 cm[3]), they show various rather pale coulours,[4] and grow solitary, scattered or gregarious but very rarely cespitose or in fascicles.[8]

Microscopic characters

The basidia have the spindle apparatus of the dividing diploid nucleus oriented orthogonally to their axis and shifted towards the tip, this makes the basidias shape being apically inflated; they bear 4 elliptic, smooth, hyaline and large (10—20 μm long) spores.[3] The basidia and the spores can appear guttulate and lack crystalline structures.[8] The hyphae of the trama have throughout the basidiocarp conspicuous clamps and they are imperfectly oriented to the logitudinal axis of the club-shaped basidiocarp, loosely interwoven and not adherent to each other.[8]

Distribution and Habitat

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The genus has a widespread distribution in temperate[9] and boreal areas of Eurasia and North America including more southern forested regions at high altitudes like around the Himalayas.[6][4][10][5] According to species that are described a longer time ago both widespread and rather restricted single-species distributions exist.[6]

Reported occurrences from the southern continents (excluding Antarctica) seem to be rare.[6] Many of them are not identified to species level or have some issues.[6] The majority of the reported occurrences on southern continents come from soil samples,[6][11] including a whole bunch of occurrences in Australia inferred from 18S rRNA sequences and identified as Clavariadelphus pistillaris.[12][13] However, the results of classical genetical short cut methods can be ambiguous for fungi, so it will be interesting to see if future studies (e.g., with genomics) will confirm the presence of Clavariadelphus on the southern hemisphere. For the identification of fungi by barcoding the ITS is recommended as a reliable sequence instead.[14]

Clavariadelphus seems to be restricted to restricted to the surrounding of trees like, e.g. conifers and oaks, mainly in (rather moist and temperate) forests.[3][4][10][5] There it grows mainly in the soil or on debris (like needles), either solitary, scattered or gregarious (in groups) - depending on species.[3][4][5]

Nutrition modes

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Both saprotrophic and mycorrhizal nutrition modes have been reported.[10][5]

Etymology

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The name of this genus is most likely a reference to the similar shaped other genus Clavaria (which is not closely related), in fact the first three species of Clavariadelphus were originally placed in Clavaria before Marinus Anton Donk established the new genus Clavariadelphus in 1933.[3] It seems to be a composition of Clavari- and adelphos, which means brother in Latin; taken together this would mean something like "the brother of Clavaria". Clavaria is coming clava, Latin for club. However, Donk did not note anything about the name, so it is difficult to be certain. Theories that the latter part of the name would come from delphus (Greek for both uterus and dolphin and thus resulting overall in something like "uterus-shaped club") seem unlikely as this may have been worth a notice in the description of the genus.[3]

Species

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References

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  1. 1 2 Species Fungorum (2025). Published on the Internet http://www.speciesfungorum.org, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. https://www.speciesfungorum.org/names/TreeOfLife.asp?GenusRecordID=17317 [Retrieved 22 March 2026].
  2. ↑ Hyde, K.D., Noorabadi, M.T., Thiyagaraja, V., Rämä, T. & 145 authors; Zvyagina, E. (2024). The 2024 Outline of Fungi and fungus-like taxa. Mycosphere 15(1), 5146–6239. https://doi.org/10.5943/mycosphere/15/1/25
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Donk, M. A. (1933). Revision der niederländischen Homobasidiomycetae-Aphyllophoraceae. Mededelingen van het Botanisch Museum en Herbarium van de Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht, 9(1), 1–278. https://repository.naturalis.nl/pub/534993
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Huang H-Y, Zhao J, Zhang P, Ge Z-W, Li X, Tang L-P (2020) The genus Clavariadelphus (Clavariadelphaceae, Gomphales) in China. MycoKeys 70: 89-121. https://doi.org/10.3897/mycokeys.70.54149
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Li M-jia, Deng P-tao, Chen Z-hong, Zhang P (2025) Three new species of Clavariadelphus (Clavariadelphaceae, Gomphales) from the Hengduan Mountains region, China. MycoKeys 121: 357-374. https://doi.org/10.3897/mycokeys.121.158142
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Clavariadelphus Donk in GBIF Secretariat (2023). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2026-03-22.
  7. ↑ Bánki, O., Roskov, Y., Döring, M., Ower, G., Hernández Robles, D. R., Plata Corredor, C. A., Stjernegaard Jeppesen, T., Örn, A., Pape, T., Hobern, D., Garnett, S., Little, H., DeWalt, R. E., Miller, J., Orrell, T., Aalbu, R., Abbott, J., Abreu, C., Acero P, A., et al. (2026). Catalogue of Life (2026-02-13 XR). Catalogue of Life Foundation, Amsterdam, Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.48580/dgwnl. https://www.catalogueoflife.org/data/search?TAXON_ID=3QMV&rank=species&status=accepted&status=provisionally%20accepted
  8. 1 2 3 Petersen, R.H. (1972). Notes on Clavarioid Fungi. XII. Miscellaneous Notes on Clavariadelphus, and a New Segregate Genus. Mycologia, Vol. 64, No. 1, pp. 137-152. https://doi.org/10.2307/3758022. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3758022
  9. ↑ Kirk PM, Cannon PF, Minter DW, Stalpers JA (2008). Dictionary of the Fungi (10th ed.). Wallingford, UK: CAB International. p. 149. ISBN 978-0-85199-826-8.
  10. 1 2 3 Hanif, M. ., Arshad, B. ., Sarwar, S. ., & Yousaf, N. . (2022). First Report of the Ectomycorrhizal Status Of Clavariadelphus Pakistanicus Hanif & Khalid Based On Morphotyping and Molecular Evidence. Bangladesh Journal of Plant Taxonomy, 29(1), 129–136. https://doi.org/10.3329/bjpt.v29i1.60453
  11. ↑ PlutoF. Global soil organisms. Occurrence dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/fdpeaw accessed via GBIF.org on 2026-03-23.
  12. ↑ Clavariadelphus pistillaris (L.) Donk in GBIF Secretariat (2023). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2026-03-23.
  13. ↑ Australian Microbiome (2025). Australian Microbiome 18S (Eukaryote) Dataset of Terrestrial Samples. Australian Microbiome. Occurrence dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/yk4a4s accessed via GBIF.org on 2026-03-23.
  14. ↑ Schoch, C.L., Seifert, K.A., Huhndorf, S., Robert, V., Spouge, J.L., Levesque, C.A., Chen, W., Bolchacova, E., Voigt, K., Crous, P.W.; et al. (2012). "Nuclear Ribosomal Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) Region as a Universal DNA Barcode Marker for Fungi". PNAS. 109 (16): 6241–6246. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1117018109.
  15. ↑ MycoBank (n.d.). Clavariadelphus truncatus. International Mycological Association (IMA) and the Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute. https://www.mycobank.org/page/Name%20details%20page/65696 [accessed 23 March 2026]
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