TUBER BUENDIAE Ant. Rodr. & Morte
Persoonia 44: 449 (2020)
Etymology:
Named after Encarnación Buendía, wife of the first author, who has been assisting in the collection of Tuber specimens, and is the collector of the type specimen.
Macroscopic characters:
Ascomata: hypogeous, 1– 3 cm in size, subglobose or irregular in form, sometimes lobed, sometimes with a basal depression, fissured in age, yellow brown to reddish brown, minutely warted with pyramidal, flattened warts.
Gleba: firm, solid, whitish at first, becoming light-brown, dark-brown or red-brown at maturity, marbled with numerous, branching, white and dark veins.
Odour: strong, pleasant
Habitat:
Tuber buendiae grows in Mediterranean Quercus ilex subsp. ballota forest, in limestone mountains of the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula (Alcaraz mountain range, 900–1600 m altitude) and Morocco. The species occurs all year; maturing during autumn and winter.
Notes:
Tuber buendiae is a reddish brown truffle that clusters in the rufum clade, and is characterised by its minutely warted peridium, brown gleba marbled with white and dark veins and spiny-reticulate spores. Tuber buendiae differs from other similar Tuber species of the rufum clade, in addition to genetic differences, by having a pleasant odour, gleba with numerous veins, and spores decorated with shorter spines, often connected by lower ridges, which sometimes form an irregular and incomplete spiny reticulum.
Microscopic characters:
Asci: inamyloid, 60–90 × 40–60 μm excluding stalk, pyriform to clavate or subglobose, with a long or short stalk arising from a crozier, 20–50 μm long, walls 1–2 μm thick, 1–4(–5)-spored.
Spores: 18–38 × 16–27 μm, Q = 1.1–1.5, excluding ornamentation, at first hyaline, yellowish brown at maturity, ellipsoid to ovoid or subglobose, ornamented with short spines, sometimes curved, 2–3(–4) μm long, often connected by lower ridges, making the ornamentation an irregular and incomplete spiny reticulum.
Peridium: 400–500 μm thick, composed of hyaline, agglutinated, interwoven hyphae (intricate texture), becoming pseudoparenchymatous towards the surface and forming pigmented, subangular, thick-walled cells, in a superficial layer 40–70 μm thick.
 | Antonio Rodríguez trufamania@gmail.com antonio@trufamania.com |