Guepinia helvelloides

Species Fungorum (2018) transfers Tremiscus helvelloides to Guepinia helvelloides.

The translucent watermelon pink to salmon orange petal-like firm-gelatinous fruiting bodies arise from the forest floor and are easy to spot against their usual background of deep moses. While widely distributed in the North Temperate zone worldwide, the species seldom fruits in abundance. The range of the northern spotted owl may be one of the areas of greatest abundance within the range of the species. However, the amount of suitable habitat is declining in large part due to human exploitation of forest resources.

Probably occurs in cool coniferous north temperate to montane forests throughout the Northern Hemisphere, but with relatively low frequency in many areas.

The species was described from Europe and is widespread in cool coniferous forests of north temperate regions including the Nordic countries (Hansen et al. 1997) and Japan (Imazeki et al. 1998). However, it is often considered to be rare. It is on the red lists for Norway with a DC rating and 83 collections (Bendiksen et al. n.d.), and Finland with a VU rating (Rassi et al. 2001). Regionally it is known from at least 4 sites in British Columbia, (Callan et al. n. d.), and has been reported from Alaska, Washington, and Idaho (Farr et al. N.d.) and Washington, Oregon, and California (Fogel n.d., ISMS data base). An accurate count of the number of occurrences in the ISMS data could not be made. According to the ISMS summary of locations 218 sites for this species were located within the region of the northern spotted owl; however, in the list of collections only about half that number of collections are listed and relatively few collections are on the MICH, OSC, or FSL web sites.

The ISMS data summary does not reflect the reality of the ISMS complete list of collections. On a global basis this species is typically found in mature, mesic, coniferous forests where the humidity is high and the moss layer well-developed; it is seldom abundant. It may fruit in the same spot, or nearly so, for at least two years in a row but how long-lived a mycelium can be is not known. The main threats are logging, development, and other activities that change the environment in the forest or destroy the forest.