Crucibulum laeve 


Crucibulum laeve01540

Crucibulum laeve (Huds.): Relh) Kambly 1936

These common splash cups are small cinnamon-yellow-brown cup-like fungi covered in velvety fibrillose hairs. The peridium of each cup opens at the top to reveal numerous creamy white peridioles or containers filled with spores. Attached to each of the lens-shaped spore packets and the inner wall of the cup is a funicular chord. When it rains, drops of water discharge the peridioles a significant distance away from the cup. Eventually the outer covering disintegrates and releases the spores. If they land on suitable substrates, such as decayed wood, wood chips, or even the inside of acorn caplets, then they will have succeeded in reproducing themselves. Called 'Bird Nest Fungi’, they can be found from spring to early winter. They tend to be gregarious and are saprotrophs. 

This is a gasteromycete, or stomach fungi in the Agaricaceae family of the Agaricales order of the Basidiomycota division.