Secotioid

Secotioid fungi are an intermediate growth form between mushroom-like hymenomycetes and closed bag-shaped gasteromycetes, where an evolutionary process of gasteromycetation has started but not run to completion. Secotioid fungi may or may not have opening caps, but in any case they often lack the vertical geotropic orientation of the hymenophore needed to allow the spores to be dispersed by wind, and the basidiospores are not forcibly discharged or otherwise prevented from being dispersed (e.g. gills completely inclosed and never exposed as in the secotioid form of Lentinus tigrinus)—note—some mycologists do not consider a species to be secotioid unless it has lost ballistospory.