Fruit bodies up to 17 x 11 mm, branched, very slender and delicate, arising from significant, verythin, arachnoid, white mycelial patches up to 50 mm' , and accompanied by similar resupinate patches without fruit bodies. Stipe up to 4 x 0.7 mm, often almost absent and then fruit body branched from base, terete, translucent, concolourous with branches when young, slowly changing to pallid pinkish ochre ("ochraceous salmon") and this colour suffusing upward. Branches lax, curved-ascending, dichotomous to irregular, terete, less than 1 mm thick but occasionally irregularly inflated, translucent, pallid yellow-ochre ("warm-buff"); axils lunate; internodes irregular. Apices irregular in length, rounded. Odour negligible; taste not recorded.

Tramal hyphae of branches 3-12 gm diam., irregularly inflated, especially around septa, hyaline, clamped, free, more or less parallel. Subhymenium rudimentary. Hymenium not thickening greatly; basidia 25-30 x 5-6 gym, clamped, subcylindrical, very delicate; contents homogeneous; sterigmata 4, very slender, erect, straight.

Spores (Fig. 80) 5-7.2 x 2.9-3.6 gm (E =1.56-2.22; E^' = 1.87; L^' = 5.76 gm), ellipsoid to short-cylindrical or subreniform, hyaline, thin-walled, smooth, contents homogeneous; hilar appendix small, papillate.

My conjecture of an association with a slime mould plasmodium is based on three observations: (i) when a small drop of water is placed on the substrate near a fruit body, the surface quickly becomes slimy; (ii) the areas where fruit bodies are formed are all somewhat darker in colour than the surrounding substrate surface, very much like dried specimens of resupinate jelly fungi; and (iii) when the slime is examined microscopically, it is found to include a remarkable number and varietyof spores and bacteria, further attesting to its sticky consistency. Finally, such an association is not unique, for Multiclavula delicata (Fr.) Pet., a very similar fungus, has been so reported. Fruit bodies of M. delicata are white, but conform to those described above in virtually every other regard. Interestingly, Fries' description of Clavaria delicata includes its habitat on rotten Fagus wood, presumably replaced in New Zealand by Nothofagus. Fruit bodies of Multiclavula samuelsii dry to a dull yellow-olive, whereas those of M. delicata dry to orange-ochre.

Corner (1950,1970) has disposed of this taxonomic complex in Lentaria, which does include small-spored taxa. The most commonly encountered is L. epichnoa (Fr.) Corner, a North Temperate taxon. Fruit bodies of that species are small, pure white, but not at all translucent or delicate. Although I am not sure that Multiclavula samuelsii, M. delicata, and M. afflata (Lagger) Pet. are closely related to M. mucida, M. clara (Martin) Pet., M. calocera (Martin) Pet., and others of that complex, perhaps M. pogonati (Coker) Pet. and M. constans (Coker) Pet. are closer to M. samuelsii than to the M. mucida complex. With further study, it may be necessary to divide the genus into subgenera. Especially important will be a study of nuclear behaviour, to ascertain whether other taxa are stichobasidial, as is M. mucida.