Astraeus odoratus Phosri, Walting, M.P. Martin & Whalley

Small to medium fruit body, coarsely fibrous to arachnoid, brownish-grey to orange-brown structure with brownish-grey endoperidial body/spore sac surmounting an orange-brown, star-shaped, fissured mosaic-like cracked and reflexed exoperidial base that raises the spore sac above the substrate (Figure 6).

Annual, rare, particolous, with a taste and odor not distinctive, and edible. Scattered or in small groups on soil as ectomycorrhizal. Fruit body 4.5–7.5 cm in diameter × 3.4–5.4 cm tall. Basidiospores are ornamented, purple-brown, spherical, warty, and 7.9–12.5 × 8.5– 13.2 µm (including ornamentation).

Notes: Found in fire-impacted scrub jungles as ectomycorrhizal with Hopea ponga in southwest Karnataka (Greeshma et al., 2016). Accession # AsodWGMRF.