Clavulina 'coralloides
PNW01' - Usually thin, whitish branches with busy tips.
It is very susceptible to a grey mold called
Helminthosphaeria,
which is unfortunate, because that makes it look like the PNW02 which
can turn naturally grey. For the sexual stage of the parasite,
you should be able to see the tiny black dots of the pimpled grey mold under a
hand lens that wouldn't normally be there if it was just a grey fruitbody.
For the asexual stage of the parasite without the black pimples, it might be
harder to tell if you have a parasite or a naturally grey coral, but the
greying due to the parasite should be more irregular. At 10 bp different from EU sequences, ours probably needs a new name.
Sequenced from BC, WA and OR. It can turn quite brown in age, which
is close to grey, making
it even more confusable with the greying species described later.
It is also unfortunate that PNW01
has been found twice with thick
branches like the C. rugosa complex. I wonder if that effect can be environmental.

Clavulina aff. coralloides © Kit Scates Barnhart,
(parasitized by Helminthosphaeria)
© Steve Trudell
Clavulina 'cinerea
PNW02'
- This similar species with thin branches naturally turns grey
in age. Young white fruitbodies will look like C. 'coralloides
PNW01'
above, and older greyish fruitbodies can look like parasitized C. 'coralloides
PNW01' as well. However, on this truly grey species, you will
not see little black dots in the grey areas that indicate you are
looking at a parasitized C. 'coralloides PNW01', and the
greying should be more regular. It has also been confused with the thicker
branched greying species C. reae (formerly a variety of C. cinerea). Sequenced from BC and WA.

Clavulina 'cinerea PNW02' © Eric Jain (currently whitish) and
Steve Ness (currently grey-brown)
Clavulina 'rugosa
PNW03' - we have four sister species in this genetic group, but our
sequences don't match any of the EU type area sequences, so we probably
don't have the real thing. These species have whitish branches are thicker and less busy than the above
species usually are, and they won't turn grey in age, unless parasitized by
Helminthosphaeria, unlike C. reae, which is not a member
of this genetic group. PNW03 was
sequenced from WA and OR.
Clavulina 'rugosa PNW07'
- a similar thick branched coral. Our one photo shows a very thick fruitbody with
moderate branching. It is only known from one WA collection
and a spruce root tip sequence near Victoria BC.
Clavulina sphaeropedunculata
MX
- one WA and one UT collection match official sequences that are said to
match the type sequene. It is sister to PNW03. Multiply
branched, and branches only somewhat thickened.
Clavulina 'rugosa CA01'
- thick branched, but our one photo shows lots of individual thick clubs with
little branching. It is known from one collection in CA and one
collection near Victoria BC (unphotographed).
Back
east they have what is normally treated as a junior synonym of
Clavulina rugosa EU, a species called Clavulina herveyi ME that
could possibly be the correct name for one of our species, but I have not found
our DNA on the east coast. It should be investigated what that east
coast species is.
Unfortunately,
PNW01 above is sometimes found with thick branches too.

Clavulina 'rugosa PNW03' © Bruce Newhouse,
C. 'rugosa PNW07' © Steve Ness, C.
sphaeropedunculata © Steve Ness, C. 'rugosa CA01' ©
Harte Singer (from CA)
Clavulina reae EU (Clavulina cinerea var. gracilis) - Our
collections of this
species also have branches that are usually thicker and less busy,
but these branches, though whitish when young, will quickly become uniformly grey
like the thinner branched species C. 'cinerea/coralloides PNW02',
above. However, it is described with thin branches like C. 'cinerea/coralloides
PNW02', so I cannot reconcile that fact with our collections having fat
branches. We should get more collections of both. This former variety was promoted to species and was not
previously known from the PNW. This probably represents many reports of
Clavulina cinerea, which does not appear to exist in the PNW. Sequenced from BC and WA, matching closely
with many EU sequences.
Clavulina 'reae PNW06' - one Victoria collection under grand
fir is 2% different in ITS, and might represent a unique species. The
collection had spores measuring 7.5-9.5 x 6.5u, whereas C. reae
is reported to have spores 9x8u. Matching sequences have been found on oak
root tips in CA, but a second collection of fruiting bodies has never been
found.

Clavulina reae © Rose Turci, C. 'reae PNW06' ©
Marty Kranabetter
Clavulina castaneipes
NC var. lignicola WA - a very interesting looking species with a
thick brown hairy
stem. The upper whitish branches are thick and blunt. Local sequences that
probably represent this variety are 2% different in ITS from NC
sequences that probably represent the type variety.
Clavulina castaneipes var. castaneipes
NC - the type variety has not been sequenced from the PNW yet,
and should be looked for. It has a thinner hairy stem and more
acute branch tips.

unsequenced Clavulina castaneipes var. lignicola © Michael Beug
Clavulina amethystina EU
- this beautiful, entirely violet-branched coral is reported from the
PNW. We have EU sequences to match to, but no PNW collections yet.
Other potential species
Nine species only known from either soil sample
sequences or, in one case, perhaps a fruiting body that got lost. We'll need
more Clavulina collections and sequences to find out which of these
species actually fruit in our area and to verify that some of them, only
known from a single single sequence, represent clean sequences. We don't
even know for sure that they are all corals, some could be crusts.