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Species Information
Summary: Features include cup-shaped, cinnamon to dark brown fruitbodies covered with whitish to rust-colored meal that can be wiped off, growth on alder in spring, and microscopic characters.
Encoelia furfuracea is found from NF to ID, CA, south to IA, and PA, and also Europe, (Seaver), including the United Kingdom (Dennis). There are collections from BC at the Pacific Forestry Centre and the University of British Columbia, and a collection from WA at the latter.
Upper surface: up to 1.5cm wide, cup-shaped, cinnamon-colored, drying black, (Dennis), 0.5-1.5cm, closed and bladder-like when young, then splitting open apically more or less in the form of a star and becoming irregularly cup-shaped to saucer-shaped; spore-bearing upper surface cinnamon-brown to dark brown, smooth, (Breitenbach), reaching 1cm or more wide, closed at first but "finally opening rather irregularly and expanded but with the margin usually incurved", color of spore-bearing surface not given, (Seaver)
Underside: covered with rust-colored meal, (Dennis), lighter in color than spore-bearing surface; "strongly furfuraceous-scurfy with flakes that can be wiped off", (Breitenbach), externally whitish-furfuraceous (Seaver)
Stem: none (Dennis)
Microscopic: spores 6-11 x 2-2.5 microns, cylindric with rounded ends, slightly curved, 2-seriate; asci 8-spored, up to 120 x 7 microns, clavate with slender stem, the pore blue in iodine; paraphyses slender, swollen to 5 or 6 microns wide at tip; meal consisting of globose cells 10-15 microns wide, (Dennis), spores 9-11 x 2 microns, allantoid [curved sausage-shaped], smooth, colorless, with 1 small droplet at each end, biseriate; asci 8-spored, 90-100 x 6 microns, amyloid; paraphyses "slender, with gradual clavate thickenings toward the tips to 5 microns"; detached excipulum cells 10-15 microns wide, rounded, brown, (Breitenbach), spores 8-10 x 2-4 microns, narrow-elliptic or allantoid [curved sausage-shaped], often with two small oil drops; asci 8-spored, reaching 80 microns long and 6-7 microns wide, narrowly clavate; paraphyses filiform but slightly enlarged in upper part, (Seaver)
Habitat / Range
singly or in small clusters on living branches of Alnus and Corylus, December to May, (Dennis for U.K.), emerging in small dense groups from bark of "still-standing dead trunks and branches of Corylus (hazel) and Alnus (alder)", often covering entire branches, December to March, (Breitenbach for Switzerland), in cespitose [in tufts] clusters of five or six, or more rarely singly, on branches of species of Alnus, (Seaver)
Similar Species
In addition to Encoelia pruinosa, Encoelia fascicularis has been recorded at least from BC (collection at Pacific Forestry Centre in Victoria): both occur on Populus.
