North Island: Little Barrier Island, Thumb Track, 1 LAM, coll. EH, no. 1531(ZT); WR, l.viii.81, coll. EH. & P. Johnston, no. 1031 (ZT).

Fruit bodies up to 6 cm high, up to 6 cm broad, brittle, branched; branching more or less regularly dichotomous and often divergent in the ultimate rank. Stipe dull violaceous tan to greyish violaceous brown ("pallid brownish drab", "vinaceous buff" to "pallid vinaceous drab", "wood brown"), with white subicular mat and occasionally white mycelium over the stipe base. Branches violaceous brown ("light brownish drab" to "pale brownish drab"); upper branches and apices grey-purple ("purple-drab"), axils narrowly rounded below, acutely angled above, often white in a line from the spore deposit. Apices rounded, almost hemispherical. No taste and odour.
Tramal hyphae 3.5-16 µm diam., thin-walled, without clamp connections, tightly packed, hyaline, parallel. Subhymenium scanty; hyphae 1.5-2 µm diam., gnarled. Basidia 25-40 x 6.2-7.3 µm, narrowly clavate to clavate, without clamp connections; contents homogeneous to multiguttulate when mature; sterigmata (2)-4, straight, slender, divergent.
Spores 5.6-6.7 x 4.4-5.2 µm (E = 1.14-1.50; E = 1.29; L = 6.12 µm); broadly ellipsoid to broadly ovate, smooth, thin-walled; contents foamy, refringent under phase contrast; hilar appendix papillate, less than 1 µm long.

On humus and earth under tree ferns.

This seems to be one of the few Clavaria (sensu stricto) species to have crossed the Equator into both North America and Europe. I have reported it previously from south-eastern Australia (Petersen 1978b), and colour notes are from that material.