South Island: PSR,19.v.82, no. 43608 (holotype, PDD; isotype, TENN).

Fruit bodies up to 45 x 2.5 mm, simple clubs, scattered to cespitose in pairs. Stipe up to 17x2 mm, terete, arising from a very small mycelial pad, off white, appearing silky. Club very pale dull yellow to ivory ("cartridge-buff'), terete to slightly sulcate, appearing waxy; apex broadly rounded. Taste and odour negligible.
Tramal hyphae of club 3-7 µm diam., clampless, parallel, tightly packed hyaline. Subhymenium extensive, pseudoparenchymatous. Hymenium thickening; basidia 35-2x7-8 µm, clavate, bifurcate or clamped, persistent after spore discharge; contents homogeneous to uniguttulate when mature; sterigmata 4, slender, curved-erect, up to 8 µm long.
Spores 5.8-6.8 x 4-4.7 µm (E = 1.31-1.64; E^m = 1.46; L^m = 6.30 µm), narrowly ovate to ellipsoid, flattened adaxially, thin-walled, delicately spinulose; contents uniguttulate when mature; hilar appendix broad, papillate; ornamentation of very slender spinules up to 1.2 µm long.

Receptacula ut in Clavaria subacuta, C. acuta, etc. Hyphis efibulatis, basidiis fibulatis. Sporis ovatis vel ellipsoideis, spinulosis, ut in oratione infra.

Clavaria mima is so named because it mimics C. acuta, C. subacuta, C. gibbsiae, and others with pale, slender fruit bodies. In all respects, it closely resembles C. californica which produces very similar (but larger) fruit bodies and spores which differ only in size. A distributional range from western North America to New Zealand would match that reported for Clavicorona piperata (q.v.), but would otherwise be unique. I consider the differences in distribution and spore dimensions enough to keep them as separate taxa, even though I have seen only one specimen of the New Zealand taxon.