Halosarpheia ratnagiriensis Patil & Borse
Ind. Bot. Rep. 1: 102, 1982.

Ascomata 300-580 mm high, 315-445 mm in diameter, ellipsoidal, immersed, ostiolate, papillate, coriaceous, hyaline, covered by hyphae. Neck upto 1450 mm long, 120-165 mm in diameter, cylindrical, emerging with whitish, fuzzy tips over the wood surface, centrally or laterally inserted; ostiolar canal periphysate. 

Asci 255-350 x 55-73 mm, eight-spored, clavate, pedunculate, unitunicate, thin-walled, thicker below the apex, persistent, with a refractive lens-shaped apical plate. 

Ascospores 46-60 x 20-26 mm (excluding appendages), ellipsoidal, one-septate, slightly constricted at the septum, hyaline, with large apical-subapical appendages; one cap-like, stiff and homogenous appendage is attached to each apex and run partially along the side of the ascospore, 4-7 mm thick, 25-32 mm long, 16-18 mm wide, at maturity becoming soft and scooplike, eventually transforming into a coil of a delicate fiber that uncoils and forms a long, sticky filament but remain attached to the ascospore apex with its thick base; when spores are released into water, a matrix enclosing the coiled filament of the appendage dissolves and releases the filament.

 

 

 

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