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Species Information
Summary: Gloeophyllum trabeum has shingled, laterally fused, or rosette-like tough caps growing stemless on wood or timber, the upper surface warm sepia to umber brown and at first velvety to tomentose, with the ocher to umber brown hymenium densely gill-like or maze-like, or with small pores.
Gloeophyllum trabeum is known in BC from 4 locations (Ginns(28)), and has been found in OR, ID, MB, ON, PQ, AL, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, SC, SD, TN, UT, VA, VT, WI, and WV, and into the tropics, (Gilbertson). It also occurs in Europe and Asia (Breitenbach).
Cap: up to 3cm broad, 8cm long, rarely more than 0.8cm thick at base, imbricate [shingled] with several fruitbodies from a common stemless base, "or as elongated fruitbodies along cracks in the wood, frequently fused laterally", leathery and tough; "upper surface warm sepia to umber brown, grayish in age, lighter along the margin in growing specimens, weakly zonate to almost azonate", at first finely velvety or adpressed tomentose, later more or less bald and smooth, or rough with very small scrupose protuberances, more rarely hispid (with stiff erect hairs) and with coarse and large tufts of hyphae at the base, these seeming to occur most often in rosette-like fruitbodies, (Gilbertson), 3-8cm along wood, projecting 1-3cm, bracket-like, fan-shaped, or semicircular, sometimes concrescent [fusing together] and linear, broadly attached; cinnamon-brown to ocher-brown; "uneven, tuberculate to radially undulating, finely tomentose when young", then becoming bald; margin irregularly wavy to crenate [scalloped], sharp, lighter brownish to gray-brownish, (Breitenbach)
Flesh: up to 0.4cm thick, "denser toward tubes, but without distinct delimitation towards the looser and cottony upper part" of the flesh; sepia to umber brown, (Gilbertson), 0.1-0.3cm thick, elastic, tough; cinnamon brown, (Breitenbach)
Pores: irregular, somewhat gill-like or maze-like to partly poroid, with quite thin walls, 2-4 per mm (in gilled specimens up to 4 gills per mm along margin); ocher to umber brown; tubes or gills up to 0.4cm deep, mostly colored as pores or lighter when stuffed, most distinctly lighter than flesh, (Gilbertson), 0.25-0.5 mm across and up to 4mm long, rounded-angular, usually somewhat elongated, sometimes gilled to maze-like; tube layer up to 0.4cm thick, (Breitenbach)
Odor: none (Breitenbach)
Taste: mild (Breitenbach)
Microscopic: spores 6.5-9.5 x 3-4.5 microns, cylindric, smooth, inamyloid, colorless, thin-walled; basidia 4-spored, 20-25 x 6-7 microns, clavate, with basal clamp; cystidia mostly embedded in hymenium, up to 30 microns long, 4-5.5 microns wide, "fusoid to slightly clavate, obtuse or conical with an acute end", thin-walled, a few with resinous excretions as small globules, colorless or slightly golden yellow, "especially at the base where they may be more thick-walled"; hyphal system dimitic (trimitic?), generative hyphae 2.5-5 microns wide, wider in context than subhymenium, colorless, with clamp connections, skeletal hyphae dominating in the fruitbody, up to 6 microns wide, "golden-brown, thick-walled, straight and without sidebranches", "in the older parts of the context also a very few branched, thick-walled golden yellow hyphae which may represent poorly developed binding hyphae", (Gilbertson)
Spore Deposit: white (Buczacki)
Habitat / Range
annual or perennial, most common on hardwood trees, but also noted on conifer wood especially structural timbers, causes a brown rot, one of the most important causes of decay in houses and other wood structures in North America, (Gilbertson), single to gregarious on dead barkless wood of hardwoods and conifers, commonly on construction wood in sunny places, (Breitenbach), probably all year, (Buczacki)
Similar Species
Gloeophyllum trabeum is told from other Gloeophyllum species by its dense gills and small pores, and the upper surface usually much smoother and softer than in other species - cystidia are normally more thin-walled than in Gloeophyllum saepiarium, (Gilbertson). Gloeophyllum sepiarium has 1.5-2 gills per millimeter at the cap margin while Gloeophyllum trabeum has 2-4 pores/gills per millimeter, (Breitenbach). See also SIMILAR section of Gloeophyllum protractum.
