The Helvellaceae are a family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 of ascomycete

Ascomycota

The Ascomycota are a Division/Phylum of the kingdom Fungi, and subkingdom Dikarya. Its members are commonly known as the Sac fungi. They are the largest phylum of Fungi, with over 64,000 species...

 fungi, the best known members of which are the elfin saddles of the genus Helvella

Helvella

Helvella is a genus of ascomycete fungus of the Helvellaceae family. The mushrooms, commonly known as elfin saddles, are identified by their irregularly shaped caps, fluted stems, and fuzzy undersurfaces. They are found in North America and in Europe. Well known species include the whitish H....

. Originally erected by Elias Magnus Fries

Elias Magnus Fries

-External links:*, Authors of fungal names, Mushroom, the Journal of Wild Mushrooming.*...

 in 1823 as Elvellacei, it contained many genera. Several of these, such as Gyromitra

Gyromitra

Gyromitra is a genus of ascomycete mushrooms found in the northern hemisphere. The most famous member is the controversial false morel ...

and Discina, have been found to be more distantly related in a molecular study of ribosomal DNA

Ribosomal DNA

Ribosomal DNA codes for ribosomal RNA. The ribosome is an intracellular macromolecule that produces proteins or polypeptide chains. The ribosome itself consists of a composite of proteins and RNA. As shown in the figure, rDNA consists of a tandem repeat of a unit segment, an operon, composed of...

 by mycologist Kerry O'Donnell in 1997, leaving a much smaller core clade

Cladistics

Cladistics is a method of classifying species of organisms into groups called clades, which consist of an ancestor organism and all its descendants . For example, birds, dinosaurs, crocodiles, and all descendants of their most recent common ancestor form a clade...

 now redefined as Helvellaceae. Instead, this narrowly defined group is most closely related to the true truffles of the Tuberaceae

Tuberaceae

The Tuberaceae are a family of mycorrhizal fungi. It includes the genus Tuber, which includes the so-called "true" truffles. It was characterized by the Belgian botanist Barthélemy Charles Joseph du Mortier in 1822. A molecular study of ribosomal DNA by mycologist Kerry O'Donnell in 1997 found that...

. According to the Dictionary of the Fungi (10th edition, 2008), the family contains six genera and 63 species.