Neolecta irregularis
English: Irregular Earth Tongue.
Genus: 3 species; only genus.
Clades: Neolectaceae, Neolectales, Neolectomycetes, Taphrinomycotina, Ascomycota, Fungi, Plants.
Region: Asia, North America, Northern Europe, southern Brazil.
Mycology: fruiting bodies in the shape of unbranched to lobed bright yellowish, orangish to pale yellow-green colored, club-shaped, smooth, fleshy columns up to about 7 cm tall; live in association with trees;parasitic, saprotrophic, mutualistic?.
Use: edible.
Taxonomy
Neolecta has no close relatives. It is weakly relative to Taphrina, a dimorphic, half yeast, half filamentous genus parasitic on leaves, branches, and catkins; Schizosaccharomyces, a genus of fission yeasts (e.g. Schizosaccharomyces pombe); and Pneumocystis, a yeast-like genus of mammalian parasites. Neolecta fruitbodies consist of hyphae and a hymenium. The hymenium lacks paraphyses and the asci lack croziers, which makes the genus distinctive among other earth-tongues.
Neolecta vitellina forms masses of conidia by budding, hinting at the possibility it also produces a yeast state. However, to date, the genus has been unculturable, suggesting it is either obligately parasitic or symbiotic. It provides important evidence for the evolutionary history of the Ascomycota and has been called a living fossil.