A tiny, tough, cup-shaped bird's nest fungus holding flattened white 'eggs' (peridioles). Raindrops splash the eggs out of the cup. Its smooth, single-layered cup and pale peridioles separate it from Cyathus, whose cup wall is three-layered and whose peridioles are usually dark.
Temperate and circumpolar: Europe, North America from Alaska to Mexico, South America, Iceland, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
Characteristics
Fruit body: a sessile cup 3-7 mm high and 3-6 mm wide; globose when young, becoming cylindrical and flared at the mouth; outer surface buff-brown, roughened to finely wrinkled; inner surface smooth, pale gray to light brown. Lid: a velvety ochraceous membrane (epiphragm) covers the young cup and soon disappears. Peridioles: flattened, lens-shaped, white to pallid, 1-2 mm broad, each attached by a thin cord (funiculus). Spores: 7.5-10 x 4-6 um, elliptical, smooth (Mykoweb California Fungi).
