Deflexula [SEP] parent taxon
Deflexula
Deflexula is a genus of tooth fungi in the family Pterulaceae.
Taxonomy.
The genus was circumscribed by British botanist E.J.H. Corner in his 1950 work ""Clavaria" and Allied Genera". The type species, "Deflexula fascicularis", was originally described in 1901 as "Pterula fascicularis" by Giacomo Bresadola and Narcisse Théophile Patouillard.
Description.
The fruit bodies are small, up to 25 mm long. Spores are white in deposit, smooth, spherical to ellipsoidal, with large oil droplets (
Taxon in disguise
In bacteriology, a taxon in disguise is a species, genus or higher unit of biological classification whose evolutionary history reveals has evolved from another unit of similar or lower rank, making the parent unit paraphyletic. This happens when rapid evolution makes a new species appear radically different from the ancestral group, so that it is not (initially) recognised as belonging to the parent phylogenetic group, leaving the latter an evolutionary grade.
While the term is from bacteriology, parallel examples are found throughout the tree of