Hi,

at New Year's Day I found this very strange ascomycet which I cannot determine. What a good start for this year...

It grew in the marginal area of a swamp on a rotten, very mossy tree stump. I am not even sure about the genus. The most striking characters are the blackening apothecia and the IKI- asci.

Here is the description:

Apothecia:
White, soon conspicuously blackening (whole fungus, especially the stipe and the stipe base) or turning dirty yellowish, 3-12 mm high, head 1-3.5 mm ø, head on the underside smooth or, when older, rugose. Stipe smooth or a bit hairy-rugose.
Spores:
irregularly elliptic, elliptic, often flattened on one side, partly deformed and with a smaller end, also comma-shaped or rhomboid, with 0-2(3) septa, occasionally germinating, sometimes with a visible nucleus, alive with hardly any content, 20-25 x 5-6(8) µm. Immature spores in asci nearly spherical!
Asci:
8 spored, clavate, biseriate, IKI-, Melzer's reagent-, KOH 5% + Melzer's reagent-; however, there is an apical apparatus, croziers+, (107)120-130 x (8)12-14 µm. Dead asci (observed in Melzer's reagent) have an up to 3 µm high dome.
Paraphyses:
filiform to slightly clavate, with strongly refractive, hyalin, multiguttulate content, in KOH 5% turning brownish. Up to 5(7) µm broad.
Textura:
the medulla is a textura intricata with 1.5-5 µm wide, often branched hyphae. The excipulum is a textura prismatica with 4.5-20 µm wide, often brown hyphae.

Best wishes,

Gernot