TERFEZIA BOUDIERI Chatin
La Truffe: 72 (1892)
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Macroscopic characters:
Ascomata: hypogeous to partially emergent at maturity, 2–6 cm in size, subglobose, turbinate, obpyriform, with more or less apparent sterile base, greyish-beige at first, becoming blackish-brown with age, unpolished, often cracked, sometimes with deep crevices.
Peridium: 1–2 mm thick, yellowish-white in cross section, pseudoparenchymatous, composed of globose cells, 15–50 µm diam, sometimes with hyphae, hyaline, yellowish in the outermost layers.
Gleba: solid, fleshy, succulent, whitish to pale pink at first, maturing to pink-salmon pockets of fertile tissue separated by sterile veins concolorous with the peridium in cross section, inconspicuous at maturity, sometimes with yellowish-brown spots.
Odour: faint, not distinctive.
Taste: mild, pleasant, gastronomically prized.
Distribution, Habitat and Season:
Countries around the Mediterranean and the Middle East, limited to arid areas, in calcareous sandy soils, associated with Helianthemum spp., March through April in Spain (Murcia and the Canary Islands), January through March in the Middle East and North Africa. Its fruiting period is highly dependent on rainfall and temperature, and the species may be absent in years when conditions are unfavourable.
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Microscopic characters:
Asci: nonamyloid, subglobose to ovoid, pyriform, sessile or short-stipitate, 60–110 x 50–80 µm, with 4–6(–8) irregularly disposed spores, randomly arranged in fertile pockets.
Ascospores: globose, (20–)21–25(–26) µm diam (median = 23 µm), including ornament, hyaline, smooth and uniguttulate at first, then yellow and ornamented with rounded, sometimes truncated warts, up to 2 µm tall and 2 µm broad, forming crests and connected in an irregular and low reticulum, most conspicuous at first, with low warts; warts are very prominent at maturity and reticulum is inconspicuous in the light microscope.
Comments:
The most distinctive characters of Terfezia boudieri are: large size, greyish-brown colour, association with Helianthemum spp. in arid areas in calcareous sandy soils, spores ornamented with warts forming a low reticulum most conspicuous at first, and asci seldom with 8 spores (usually 6).
 | Antonio Rodríguez trufamania@gmail.com antonio@trufamania.com |