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

Summary:
{See also Dacrymyces Table.} Dacrymyces capitatus produces tiny, soft, gelatinous, cartilaginous, cushion-shaped to top-shaped or plate-shaped fruiting bodies that are pale yellow to somewhat translucent, have a short stem with a rooting base, and grow on hardwood or rarely conifers. According to McNabb (1973) it is recognized by its more or less stipitate [stemmed] habit, its typically convoluted cap at maturity, the absence of clamp connections, and the 3-septate spores with thin or slightly thickened walls and septa, (hairs at the base of the cap also being relatively constant). Arrhytidia involuta (Schwein.) Coker is considered a synonym but note that G.W. Martin found conspicuous clamp connections.

Distribution includes BC, WA, OR, ID, AB, ON, PQ, AZ, GA, IA, KS, LA, MA, MI, MS, NC, NJ, NY, and PA, (Ginns), CA (Desjardin), Finland, France, Netherlands, United Kingdom, USSR, and New Zealand, (McNabb), Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama, Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, (Lowy), Czechoslovakia, South Africa, Tunisia, and Australia, (Reid), and Estonia (Raitviir).

Fruiting body:
0.05-0.1cm, low pulvinate [cushion-shaped] to plate-shaped; pale yellow, in part somewhat translucent, cartilaginous, gelatinous, soft; smooth, sometimes white-pruinose; short substantial stem somewhat rooting, gradually merging into upper part, (Breitenbach), 0.2-0.6cm diameter, to 0.5cm high, often coalescing to form erumpent masses 2cm across, "pustulate, turbinate, stoutly cylindrical, or piston-shaped at first", becoming spherical, depressed-spherical, applanate, or concave, consistency firm-gelatinous, on wood with bark attached centrally by tough often pallid stem or stem-like rooting base which passes through the bark and penetrates the wood, the stem base often surrounded by white mycelium, on wood without bark stem or stem-like rooting base shorter and fruiting bodies may be sessile, substipitate or short-stipitate; "bright orange-yellow to brownish orange when fresh, drying brown, brownish red or dull wine-red"; sometimes faintly villose from colorless tomentum over developing spore-bearing area, smooth, gyrose, or convoluted, stem and base of cap covered with hairs, (McNabb), 0.3-0.5cm in diameter, smooth or more or less convolute, fusing to form irregular masses up to 6cm by 2cm, dull to bright orange-yellow, drying reddish brown, (Martin), stoutly stemmed turbinate [top-shaped],"when mature, typical fruitbodies appear as small, mushroom-shaped bodies" in which the fertile head 0.1-0.15cm across, "may be shallowly concave, flat, or slightly convex, and either smooth or with a few gyrose wrinkles", fertile part is never abruptly delimited from stem, (Reid), spore deposit white (Buczacki)

Microscopic:
spores (8)10-13 x 4-5.5 microns, elliptic-cylindric, slightly curved, smooth, inamyloid, colorless, thin-walled, with 3 septa when mature, also conidia cut off from spores 4.5-6 x 4-5, nearly round; basidia 25-30 x 3-3.5 microns, fork-shaped; cystidia not seen; hyphae 2-3 microns wide, thin-walled to thick-walled, in part finely incrusted, no clamp connections, (Breitenbach), spores 11-17 x 3.5-6(7) microns, curved-cylindric, orange in mass, "typically thin-walled, occasionally walls and septa slightly thickened, tinted, apiculate"; germination by colorless, spherical conidia and/or germ tubes; probasidia 25-52(60) x 3-5.5 microns, cylindric-subclavate, with basal septa, becoming bifurcate; hymenium consisting of basidia and occasionally simple, cylindric dikaryophyses; internal hyphae thin-walled, typically roughened, occasionally smooth, septate, without clamp connections, hyphae of stem and rooting base heavily and irregularly gelatinized, hairs on stem and base of cap simple, cylindric, septate, thin-walled or thick-walled, often with terminal cells slightly inflated, (McNabb), spores 14-18.5 x 5-7 microns, allantoid [curved sausage-shaped], early 1-3 septate, orange-yellow in mass, pale yellow by transmitted light; internal hyphae smooth, with conspicuous open clamp connections, (Martin)