A New Coprinoid Species Record for Turkish Macromycota

Though the history of macrofungal studies on Turkish macromycota goes back to almost 100 years and the number of them have increased particularly in the last 3 decades, the accumulated data presents about 2400 taxa. Compared to the 15.000 assumed macrofungi of Europe and the macrofungal diversity estimates of Mueller et al. regarding the plant/macrofungus ratios of temperate regions, there is still much to be done to obtain the overall macrofungal data of Turkey. To contribute to the macrofungal biodiversity of Turkey, this study was carried out, and a new coprinoid species, Leucocoprinus cepistipes (Sowerby) Pat. belonging to the family Agaricaceae, is given as new record for the macromycota of Turkey from Ardesen district of Rize province. The taxon is desribed briafly and photographs related to its macro and micromorphologies are given.


Introduction
Leucocoprinus Pat. is a genus of the family Agaricaceae with about 40 species [1].The members of the genus have a cosmopolitan distribution and characterized by small to medium, lepiotoid to coprinoid basidiocarp; convex to plane, membranous, radially sulcate or striate pileus; free, whitish and crowded lamellae; cylindrical, hollow, rarely bulbous, central stipe; membranous annulus; clavate, tetrasporic, sometimes bisporic to monosporic basidia; ellipsoid, hyaline, smooth, dextrinoid, thick walled and apically germ pored basidiospores Though the members of the genus resemble the species of Leucoagaricus Locq.ex Singer and Macrolepiota Singer, they are differentiated from Macrolepiota by their small sized basidiocarps and by the absence of clamp connection, while they can be distinguished from Leucoagaricus by their fragile, coprinoid, plicate-sulcate pileal margins [2].
During our routine field studies, carried out to determine the macrofungal diversity of Ardeşen (Rize) district, within the scope of a university research fund project, some white coprinoid fungi samples were collected and identified as Leucocoprinus cepistipes (Sowerby) Pat.
The study aims to make a contribution to the mycobiota of Turkey.

Material and Method
Leucocoprinus Pat.samples were collected from Ardeşen (Rize) district in 2017.During collection necessary ecological and morphological characteristics of the samples were recorded and they were photographed in their natural habitat.Then the specimens were transferred to the lab within paper bags.Microscopic studies were carried out under Nikon Eclipse Ci trinocular light microscope.
Photographs related to micromorphology were taken by DS-Fi2 digital camera.Meltzer's reagent was used to dye the histological preparations.The samples were identified with the help of Candusso and Lanzoni [26], Breitenbach and Kränzlin [27], Jordan [28], Lopez and Garcia [29], Pushpa and Purushothama [2], Kuo [30] and Desjardin et al. [31].Leucocoprinus samples are kept at Karamanoğlu Mehmetbey University, Kamil Özdağ Science Faculty, Department of Biology.Macroscopic features: Cap 30-50 mm in diameter, at first narrowly ovoid, then conic campanulate and finally broadly convex to plano-convex or seldomly plane, central obtuse umbo becomes apparent at maturity, surface pure white to greyish white, darker at the center, powdery with soft, whitish scales and granules, margin somewhat incurved, striate and splitting, often hung with scattered veil fragments.Flesh thin, soft, white, odour and taste mild to not distinctive.Gills free, white when young then pallid to pale puff.Stipe 40-70 × 4-7 mm, cylindrical, straight to sinuous, hollow, tapering towards the apex with a white membranous annulus on the upper part, somewhat bulbous at the base, sometimes with scattered soft powdery remains, white, surface smooth to sparcely pruinose (Figure 1).

Discussion and Conclusion
Leucocoprinus cepistipes is a whitish and softly scalypowdery capped lepiotoid mushroom that fruits primarily in parks, gardens, golf courses etc., as well as native woodlands especially on well decomposed woody litter.Generally the characteristics of the investigated sample coincide with those given in literature [2,[26][27][28]31].
With this study, Leucocoprinus cepistipes was added to Turkish mycobiota as new record increasing the current taxa number of this genus to seven.