E-Flora BC: Electronic Atlas of the Flora of British Columbia

Summary:
Features include 1) resupinate growth on wood, 2) fruitbodies with a soft-membranous texture, the color tan or yellow to pink-ochraceous, the surface with convoluted fine folds, and the white margin sometimes with rhizomorphs, 3) spores that small, oval, smooth, inamyloid, and thin-walled, 4) a monomitic hyphal system, the hyphae with clamp connections, and the subhymenial hyphae with crystalline to granular or resin-like material. Justo(6) indicates that this species belongs in Irpicaceae, and since the holotype of Ceraceomyces (C. tessulatus) is in Amylocorticiaceae, C. serpens would need a different name.

Ceraceomyces serpens has been found in BC, WA, ID, AB, MB, NS, NT, ON, PQ, AK, AZ, CA, CO, FL, MI, MN, MT, NC, NJ, NM, NY, SC, and WI, (Ginns(5)), Brazil, widespread in Europe from France to Hungary to Finland, Siberia in Russia, and China, (Ginns(12)), and Switzerland (Breitenbach).

Fruiting body:
up to 10cm x 4cm, occasionally longer, up to 0.07cm thick, effused, adnate [firmly attached]; "usually tan or lemon-yellow to pink-ochraceous, rarely darker to cinnamon-brown"; when fresh soft and membranous, when dry, shiny, pruinose, frequently becoming fissured; folds up to 0.05cm deep, "frequently branched, sometimes interrupted, occasionally gyrose-plicate, anastomosing to form oval or more often, by convergence, irregularly shaped pits, three to five per millimetre"; margin up to 0.5cm wide, "white, variable in a particular specimen from narrow and granulose to wide, radiating and cottony"; flesh homogeneous, white; "hyphal strands sometimes present, white to pallid", up to 0.05cm wide, (Ginns(12)), resupinate, about 0.05cm thick; at first white, "then more or less yellowish, orange, pale red or even greenish"; at first smooth then merulioid; margin white and becoming fibrillose; "small rhizomorphs often present in the decayed wood and in the periphery of the fruitbody"; subiculum white, (Eriksson), forming soft membranous-waxy patches up to 0.05cm thick and several centimeters to decimeters across, attached +/- loosely; whitish with lilac-red to pink-red spots, "with lilac-red tinge toward margin"; "with cerebriform convoluted folds and somewhat tuberculate"; margin filamentous, sometimes with thin rhizomorphs, (Breitenbach)

Microscopic:
SPORES 3.5-5 x 2-2.5 microns, oval to broadly oval, in side view "adaxially flattened or slightly concave, with a distinct, truncated, somewhat elongated apiculus", smooth, inamyloid, colorless, thin-walled; BASIDIA 16-33 x 3.5-5.5 microns, narrowly clavate; CYSTIDIA none; HYPHAE monomitic: CONTEXT HYPHAE 2-4.5(6.5) microns wide, sometimes swollen at a septum, thin-walled, colorless, with clamp connections, sometimes crystalline-encrusted, SUBHYMENIAL HYPHAE 2-4 microns, the subhymenial area "often heavily impregnated with fine granules or a resin-like substance", (Ginns(12)), SPORES 4-5.5 x 2-2.5 microns, narrowly elliptic; BASIDIA 4-spored, 18-28 x 4-5 microns, narrowly clavate; CYSTIDIA none; HYPHAE monomitic, SUBHYMENIAL HYPHAE 2.5-3.5 microns wide, "densely intertwined, more or less covered with crystalline material", with clamp connections, BASAL HYPHAE 3-5 microns wide, more loosely intertwined and more sparsely branched, often joined in parallel fashion to hyphal strings, with clamp connections; abundant crystalline material in interhyphal spaces, (Eriksson), SPORES 4-5.5 x 2-2.5 microns, elliptic, smooth, inamyloid, colorless, some with droplets; BASIDIA 4-spored, 20-30 x 4.5-5 microns, narrowly clavate, with basal clamp connection; CYSTIDIA none; HYPHAE monomitic: hyphae 2-4 microns, septa with clamp connections, no crystals observed (according to literature with crystal deposits), young fruitbody, (Breitenbach)