North Island: WKR, across river from Forestry Headquarters, 24.vi.81, coll. RHP, no. 42418 (holotype, PDD; isotype, TENN); OSF, Kauri Reserve, Lvi.82, coll.RHP, no. 43555 (TENN). South Island: FGNP, Rd to Gillespie's Beach, 9.iv.83, coll. GS, no. 44131 (TENN).

Fruit bodies up to 50 x 2 mm, simple clubs, single or gregarious, slender, gracile, arising from a small, white mycelial patch. Club equal, delicate coral-pink ("orange-pink", "pale flesh color", "shrimp-pink", "grenadine-pink"), opaque to subtranslucent, appearing waxy; flesh concolourous; apex narrowly rounded. Stipe up to 1 mm thick, equal, seldom curved, silky-striate, pale pink ("seashell-pink", "orient-pink") and more translucent than club. Taste and odour negligible.
Tramal hyphae significantly inflated, thin-walled, clampless, adherent, hyaline; crystalline material common; secondary septa rare. Subhymenium well developed, pseudoparenchymatous. Hymenium thickening; basidia 50-60 x 7-8 µm, clavate, clamped, persistent after spore discharge; contents homogeneous when young, granular to multiguttulate when mature, the guttules strongly refringent; sterigmata 4, stout, curved-divergent.
Spores (Fig. 26) 7.2-9.4 x 6.5-9.0 µm (E = 1.04-1.15; E^m = 1.11; L^m = 8.50 µm), subglobose, grossly ornamented, thin-walled; contents uniguttulate when mature, the guttule refringent, filling most of the spore; hilar appendix broad, papillate-truncate; ornamentation of cylindrical to narrowly conical spines up to 4 µm long, often oriented in non-radial directions; spore "ghosts" common in mounts of mature hymenium.

On very rotten soggy wood and humus.

Receptacula ad 50 x 2 mm, simplicia, solitaria vel gregaria, gracilia, armeniaco-rosacea. Hyphis efibulatis; basidiis fibulatis. Sporis subglobosis, echinulatis, ut in oratione infra.

In fruit body stature (but not colour) and micromorphology this taxon is close to C. echino-olivacea. Spore ornamentation is almost identical, and the spines longer than any others I have seen. Moreover, the non-radial orientation gives these spores a bizarre, dishevelled appearance.
The guttules from the basidia are easily liberated into microscopic squash mounts, and may be confused with spores.
The spines must develop very quickly and very late in spore development. Fully 90% of all spores observed were smooth, but many were also immature as revealed by their multiguttulate contents. Only two spores were seen with short (immature?) spines, whereas the number of mature, fully spiny spores was perhaps 10% of all those seen. I seriously considered whether the spiny spores were contaminants, but if so, then they were identical to those of C. asperulospora Atk., C. echino-olivacea, and C. californica (the spores of which are ellipsoid, but with similar spine morphology). Moreover, the same distribution of smooth and spiny spores can be seen in C. echino-olivacea, leading one to the theory above, rather than accounting for these spores as artefacts.