Examples of basidia (with explanatory notes following the illustrations)
All drawings are to the same scale and the red scale bar indicates a length of 10 micrometres. An a indicates an immature basidium.
In general a basidium is the terminal element on a hypha and in figures 2, 3,4,5, 6, 10 and 13a you can see small fragments of basidium-producing hyphae at the bases of the basidia. In a few genera (such as Phlebiella, figure 12) basidia generally develop as a lateral outgrowth.