The authors report on a brown chanterelle collected in the sandy soils of Madagascar's east coast. As this specimen agrees entirely with the protologue of C. avellaneus, it is here described and proposed as epitype for this apparently rare chanterelle that was first described in 1924 by Narcisse Patouillard. Its systematic placement as part of Cantharellus subg. Parvocantharellus sect. Congolenses is demonstrated using a multigene phylogeny and its complete ITS barcode sequence is provided.

Cantharellus miniatescens is lectotypified. An epitype sequenced for four gene regions (LSU, mitSSU, RPB2 and Tef1-alpha) is selected among recent collections from Cameroon and Central African Republic and fully described and illustrated. Complete ITS sequences have been deposited as barcodes. The systematic position is determined using a multigene phylogenetic analysis which places this species in Cantharellus subg. Pseudocantharellus in agreement with its morphological features.

This paper deals with some of the larger, more or less yellowish or orange Cantharellus species from the tropical African woodlands and rain forests. Four new species with clamp connections are described: Cantharellus guineensis, C. mikemboensis, C. pseudomiomboensis and C. stramineus. The new taxa show moderate to strong resemblance to either Cantharellus rufopunctatus or C. miomboensis. A two-locus phylogeny, based on part of the protein coding genes rpb2 and tef-1, resolved them as a highly supported clade within Cantharellus subgenus Rubrinus, a subgenus still exclusively composed of tropical African species. This monophyletic clade is here described as a new section within subg. Rubrinus. As the subgenus was previously defined as being composed of chanterelles lacking clamp connections, the definition of the subgenus is here amended. Illustrations and new records are also presented for Cantharellus afrocibarius, C. defibulatus, C. miomboensis, C. rufopunctatus and C. sublaevis. This paper provides first sequences for C. defibulatus, C. rufopunctatus and C. sublaevis, all of which are here epitypified, as well as new sequences for more than a dozen other Cantharellus. Cantharellus cibarius var. latifolius is considered a synonym of C. afrocibarius. An identification key to all mainland African Cantharellus is proposed.

Cantharellus section Tenues was originally created for four new, very small, redorange-yellow Central African chanterelles with a more or less fistulose stipe, short basidia and an omphaloid habit. The type species, C. tenuis, is here considered unrelated to the other three species as it is the only species having clamp connections. All four species remain poorly known and need to be recollected and epitypified with recently collected, sequenced specimens that comply to the original description. In this paper, C. alboroseus is epitypified, and an equally small species, C. minutissimus, is introduced. Both species are systematically placed using a multigene phylogeny.

The authors discuss and illustrate several American collections of Cantharellus that are in one way or another related to species that have previously been reported or described from Wisconsin. These new collections indicate that the potential distribution area of many of these chanterelles may be much larger than generally assumed. Cantharellus deceptivus sp. nov. is described as new cryptic look-alike of C. phasmatis and problems related to the narrow species concept of C. flavus and C. phasmatis are discussed; C. iuventateviridis sp. nov. is described as closest southern relative to C. chicagoensis. Microscopic features of C. chicagoensis and C. flavus are illustrated for the first time. Cantharellus spectaculus is considered a later synonym of C. persicinus on morphological criteria.

This contribution on the genus Cantharellus in North America introduces three new look-alikes of already known species in the eastern United States and thereby exposes the problem of species delimitation in Cantharellus. The small, reddish pink to orange C. corallinus sp. nov. is yet another look-alike of C. cinnabarinus, while the new C. flavolateritius is proposed as a new southern relative of C. lateritius. Both new species are, however, genetically clearly divergent. Such a scenario of “cryptic species” corresponds to a concept that is widely admitted even by field mycologists and therefore easily accepted. In contrast, typical forms of the here newly described C. velutinus sp. nov. are nearly indistinguishable from C. lateritius, but the phenotypic variability of this new species (as supported by phylogenetic inference of the TEF-1 gene) is so impressive that it is hard to accept that the various observed phenotypic forms all belong to a single species as indeed suggested by their identical sequence data. The latter scenario, that of lumping easily separable phenotypic forms in the field under a single species epitheton encounters much more criticism from most field mycologists and is only reluctantly accepted.

This paper attributes two more species to Cantharellus subg. Cinnabarinus: the here newly described C. coccolobae, a strict associate of Coccoloba species in subtropical and tropical America, and the New Caledonian C. garnieri. A multigene analysis places both species in a genus phylogeny and their macro- and microscopic features are illustrated and discussed.

The authors assembled for the first time a sequence dataset representative of all 29 presently described North American Cantharellus species, including not only all six newly described North American species presented in this special issue, but very importantly, also newly obtained partial ITS and LSU sequence data from the type specimens of C. camphoratus and C. septentrionalis, two species that supposedly had never been recollected in the United States since their original description. As such, they hope to put the record straight for future research on Cantharellus in North America and to allow for a more precise identification and appreciation of newly collected, sequenced specimens.