bonnet mould

A member of the diverse Zygomycota, Spinellus is grouped in the Mucorales with the bread molds. Unlike the group name implies, Spinellus does not find its home on bread, but rather by parasitizing several agarics (mushrooms), mainly Mycena species such as Mycena haematopus. Other species infecting mushrooms include Spinellus chalybeus, S. macrocarpus, and S. gigasporus. They show their true genius by being a pathogen that does not kill its host too quickly, allowing the gilled mushrooms it decays to release their sexual spores (ensuring the existences of new hosts for Spinellus to infect) before digesting the fruiting body to a puddly mess. In addition, Spinellus, named for its "little spines," has thorough time to produce its asexual spores inside sporangia, which stretch from the host to be distributed by wind, water, insects, or animals. This also allows sufficient time for fungophiles tromping in the woods to come across these hairy delights, giving Spinellus fusiger several photographic opportunities to appear in the limelight of the Internet. It may have even fooled the world, when upon first spotting the infected Mycena fruiting bodies a hunter exclaimed, ( http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/mar2004.html ),----- expected vctim: " rhodocollybia maculata", many of the gilled mushrooms shows little "pins" on the cap and beneath the gills. here another spotting --> ( http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/9044381 )