The genus has a widespread distribution in
temperate and
boreal areas of
Eurasia and
North America including more southern forested regions at high altitudes like around the
Himalayas. According to species that are described a longer time ago both widespread and rather restricted single-species distributions exist. Reported occurrences from the southern
continents (excluding
Antarctica) seem to be rare. Many of them are not identified to
species level or have some issues. The majority of the reported occurrences on southern continents come from
soil samples, including a whole bunch of occurrences in
Australia inferred from
18S rRNA sequences and identified as
Clavariadelphus pistillaris. However, the results of classical
genetical short cut methods can be ambiguous for
fungi, so it will be interesting to see if future studies (e.g., with
genomics) will confirm the presence of
Clavariadelphus on the southern hemisphere. For the identification of fungi by
barcoding the
ITS is recommended as a reliable
sequence instead.
Clavariadelphus seems to be restricted to restricted to the surrounding of
trees like, e.g.
conifers and
oaks, mainly in (rather moist and
temperate)
forests. There it grows mainly in the soil or on debris (like
needles), either solitary, scattered or gregarious (in groups) - depending on species. ==Nutrition modes==