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Species Information
Summary: {See also Trametes versicolor and similar polypores Table.} Cerrena unicolor is easy to recognize because of the hirsute (coarsely hairy) cap, the black line in the flesh, and the labyrinthine pore surface. This species was identified as the fungal symbiont of the wood wasp Tremex columba on Fagus grandifolia in eastern Canada.
Cerrena unicolor has been found in BC, WA, OR, ID, AB, MB, NS, NWT, ON, PQ, AK, AR, CO, CT, DE, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, ME, MI, MN, MO, MT, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, SD, TN, TX, VA, VT, WI, WV, and WY, and it is widespread in Asia and Europe, (Gilbertson).
Cap: growing on wood, semicircular cap with no stem, or with part of the fruitbody flat (with pore surface exposed) and part of it shelving into a cap, or rarely flat with pore surface exposed, up to 10cm wide, often in shingled clusters, annual; upper surface pale brownish to gray, often green due to algae; hirsute (with coarse elongated hairs) to almost bald, grooved, (Gilbertson), 0.5-7.5cm across, "starts as a spreading resupinate, then forms crowded often overlapping brackets; white to gray; thin; with dense covering of stiff hairs, often zoned and with covering of algae on upper surface", (Phillips)
Flesh: up to 0.3cm thick; duplex, with corky pale brown layer separated from soft spongy darker upper layer by a thin dark zone, (Gilbertson), thin, tough; white, (Phillips)
Pores: 3-4 per mm, maze-like, variable, in parts larger; ivory to pale buff when young, becoming darker when old; walls "at first thick and tomentose, becoming thin and splitting"; tube layer up to 1cm thick, continuous with lower flesh, (Gilbertson), 2-3 per mm, white to gray, tube layer 0.04-0.4cm thick, maze-like, becoming tooth-like or rarely pore-like, whitish, (Phillips)
Microscopic: spores 5-7 x 2.5-4 microns, cylindric-elliptic, smooth, inamyloid, colorless; basidia 4-spored, 20-25 x 5-6 microns, clavate, with basal clamp; cystidia 40-60 x 4-5 microns, hyphoid (not clearly differentiated from vegetative hyphae), thin-walled, with basal clamp; hyphal system trimitic: generative context hyphae 2-4 microns wide, thin-walled, nodose-septate, skeletal context hyphae 2.5-5 microns wide, thick-walled, aseptate, binding hyphae 2-4 microns wide, thick-walled, aseptate, much-branched, tramal hyphae similar, (Gilbertson), spores 5.5-7 x 3-3.5, elliptic, smooth, inamyloid, colorless, (Breitenbach)
Spore Deposit: white (Phillips)
Habitat / Range
annual, on dead wood of many genera of hardwoods, rarely on conifers, causing white rot of dead hardwoods, (Gilbertson), on living hardwoods as wound parasite, or dead trunks, as well as stumps and hardwood on ground, (Breitenbach), fall (Buczacki)
Similar Species
Daedalea quercina and Daedaleopsis confragosa have fewer hairs (Lincoff); Irpex lacteus has long flattened tooth-like tubes (Lincoff); Gloeophyllum saepiarium has brown spore-bearing surface that is gill-like or with poroid or tooth-like surface or with elongated pores, and upper surface is rusty brown to dark brown or maroon brown, often with yellow or orangish zones; Lenzites betulina has spore-bearing surface that is mostly gill-like, but forked and fused together in places. See also SIMILAR section of Daedaleopsis confragosa.
