Yellow Clavaria species in the British Isles

At the 2005 grassland fungi workshop in Wales, Debbie Evans brought along a specimen of a yellow clavarioid fungus which she had identified as Clavaria amoenoides Corner et al., a species not previously known to be British but listed in Nordic Macromycetes (Hansen & Knudsen, 1997) as occurring in Scandinavia. An additional collection was made during the workshop itself and further specimens were collected at the 2006 upland foray in Wales, in a pasture next to the foray centre. It seems we now have three yellow or yellowish Clavaria species in the British Isles, all of them unbranched (tubular or clubshaped) and distinctly pale or dull compared with the much commoner and brighter yellow Clavulinopsis species. As with the black and brown Clavaria species (Roberts, 2007), the literature on these species is scattered, so a brief key and descriptions follow. ‘Q’ is spore length divided by breadth.