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Species Information
Summary: The yellowish brown to cinnamon brown, branched fruitbody is paler upwards, and has crowned branch tips, slowly peppery taste, slightly roughened amyloid spores 4.0-5.0 x 3.0-3.5 microns, and cystidia of two types.
Collections were examined from BC, WA, ID, and Australia, (Dodd). There are collections from OR at Oregon State University.
Fruiting body: 2-8cm high, branching verticillately in 2-5 ranks, primary branches 0.2-0.4cm wide, secondary branches usually about 0.2cm wide, tips coronate [crowned], (Dodd), 4-6cm high, from a single stem or slender trunk that is about 0.2-0.3cm wide, "dichotomously to polychotomously branched; secondary branches pyxidate, at times candelabra-form, curved-spreading at maturity, loosely arranged", "primary and secondary branches dilated upwards, with rounded, obtuse sinuses, branching repeated four to five times, terminal branchlets acutely pointed", (Doty, quoting Kauffman)
Flesh: somewhat tough, pliable; slightly lighter in color than surface, (Dodd), fleshy, slightly toughish, (Doty, quoting Kauffman)
Branch color: "pallid to cinnamon-brown, paler upwards", (Doty, quoting Kauffman), ''pale yellowish pink'' ("drab-gray", "light drab"), to ''grayish yellowish brown'' ("wood brown", "Saccardo''s umber") near base, becoming slightly darker when old, (Dodd, colors in single quotation marks from Kelly(3), in double quotation marks from Ridgway)
Stem: covered with brownish fascicles [bundles] of hyphae, hirsute [hairy], inserted on effuse [spread out] brownish mycelial pad, 0.5-1cm wide, (Dodd)
Chemical Reactions: flesh inamyloid (Dodd)
Taste: slowly acrid [peppery], (Dodd)
Microscopic: spores 4.0-5.0 x 3.0-3.5 microns, subglobose to broadly ovoid, asperulous [rough], amyloid, white, thin-walled; basidia 4-spored, (20)23-30 x (4.0)4.5-5.0 microns, sterigmata 3.5-5.0 microns long; gloeocystidia 4-6(8) microns wide, often projecting 16-25 microns beyond basidia, cylindric with rounded to acute apices, or ventricose, "usually arising from gloeoplerous hyphae but occasionally from hymenial generative hyphae", leptocystidia projecting up to 10 microns, 3-5 microns wide, ventricose, filamentous, often dichotomously branched, colorless, frequently with clamp connections; hymenium plus subhymenium 30-50 microns thick; subhymenial generative hyphae 1.6-2.5 microns wide, short-celled, tightly interwoven, with clamp connections, gloeoplerous hyphae as in context; context hyphae aerenchymatous, generative hyphae up to 15 microns wide, inflated, with clamp connections, colorless, thin-walled, "gloeoplerous hyphae 4-6(8) microns wide, clamped at base, containing yellow refractive material, terminating as gloeocystidia", (Dodd), spores from type distinctly amyloid and typically echinulate to asperulate, rarely smooth, (note made that both Doty and Corner had described the spores as smooth), (Leathers(1))
Habitat / Range
gregarious or occasionally cespitose [in tufts], on rotten conifer logs, September to November in North America, (Dodd)
Similar Species
Artomyces cristatus and Artomyces divaricatus have longer spores, (Dodd(1)). Artomyces pyxidatus occurs in Europe and North America from Quebec to Alabama, west to Wasatch Range in the Rocky Mountains. It can be differentiated by its spores measuring (3.5)4.0-5.0(5.5) x 2.0-2.6(3.0) microns. They are less than 3 microns wide whereas those of A. piperatus are at least 3 microns wide. (Dodd(1)).
