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Which Scarlet Cup is it?


Guest Vlad

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On 5/3/09 I went on a foray with the Berkshire Mycological Society. They find the Scarlet Cup in the spring at Gould Meadow in Stockbridge, MA. I was curious to find out what specie of Scarlet Cup grew there Sarcoscypha dudleyi or Sarcoscypha austriaca. They now say that Sarcoscypha coccinea grow only on the west coast. The group gave me several specimens to get spores from. They were puffing spores all over the place. By the time I drove 100 miles home they were all puffed out. I could not get a spore print. I scraped the inside surface for spores and managed to photograph them. The thing is Michael Kuo describes them “when fresh”. What the heck is that? Some spores are completely sheathed others are only sheathed on the ends. Some have rounded ends others have flattened ends. So my Scarlet Cups have the characteristics of both species. The only thing definite is that they are not S. coccinea.

I went this past spring again and brought some slides with me so that I could have them puff right on my slides. But this spring was cold and no Scarlet Cups appeared. I am looking forward to next spring. Meanwhile those of you who wish to look at my page that shows the spores, please do so and see if you can decide which specie it is. I tentatively chose Sarcoscypha dudleyi since I am pretty sure that DNA evidence will show that a Scarlet Cup that grows in Austria would not grow in the Berkshires or anywhere else in America. The Dudley fellow sounds American to me.

http://mushroomhunter.net/050309.htm

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Oh my! We have scarlet Cups here in Ontario and I think everyone considers them to be S. austriaca. I am a rookie so I cant evaluate the reasons why dudleyi is not a consideration (except it is one of those stupid made up pseudo latin words). George Barron's field guide is a near bible in these parts and he says it is austriaca and that is good enough for me.

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You are lucky that you live in an area where there is only one specie. This way you do not need a microscope to tell them apart. Too me, the name Scarlet Cup is the name of choice. It applies to all the various specie. But this is the fun of looking for answers that makes mycology more interesting to me.

I think one of those things fell into place. On the way home from the foray I had all four Scarlet Cups in one bag. I think they puffed all over each other so when I scraped the surface to get spores I was getting spores from all of them. It never occurred to me that 2 different specie of scarlet cup would grow at one location. This spring I will bring my slides with me and place each cup on a different slide then put them in a separate plastic baggy.

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I don't know the Scarlet Cup species very well. Kuo's reference to examining the sheathing when the spores are fresh may indicate, that as they age/dry/shrink, the sheathing becomes more difficult to characterize. It will be interesting to see if there are actually two different species of Scarlet Cup found during your next Stockbridge foray.

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