the sheath, which is anchored to the nest wall. A stretchy middle piece links purse and sheath, and together these three structures form the funiculus. Coiled under pressure inside the purse and attached to the egg is a cable-like cord composed of hundreds of strands of solid hyphae 2–12 cm long. Near the end of the cord is a clump of sticky hyphae called the hapteron. Species within the remaining genera lack these structures altogether (Brodie, 1975).


Spore Dispersal Although the work of the French


Figure 4. A pair of Crucibulum laeve showing twinning, eight tawny eggs and smooth inner walls characteristic of the species. Jonathon Marks photo.


botanists Étienne and Edmund Tulasne uncovered the complex structure of BNF eggs, the brothers stopped short of explaining how the dispersal mechanism worked (Brodie, 1975). A role for water in egg dispersal was first mentioned by English naturalist John Ray in 1686, but never explicitly explained until 1927 when American mycologist George Willard Martin found BNF eggs adhering to corn stalks and deduced that they were propelled there by the impact of raindrops on nests clustered on the


Summer 2026 FUNGI Volume 19:2 11


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