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Species Information
Summary: Features include 1) resupinate growth on wood, 2) fruitbodies that are whitish to pale yellowish ochraceous, and tuberculate (grandinioid), often with branched rhizomorphs, 3) spores that are small, elliptic, smooth, and inamyloid, 4) cystidia of two types: a) cylindric, encrusted when projecting with double-pyramidic crystals, yellow when enclosed, and b) smaller sulfo-positive gloeocystidia containing small oil droplets, 5) a monomitic hyphal system, the hyphae with clamp connections.
Metulodontia nivea has been found in BC, ON, PQ, Northwest Territories, MD, ME, MN, MT, NY, and TN, (Ginns), as well as Finland, Norway, Sweden, central Europe, and the USSR, (Eriksson), and Austria, France, and Germany, (Bourdot).
Fruiting body: resupinate, effused, adnate [firmly attached], rather firm, mostly 0.01-0.02cm thick; creamish white to pale yellowish ochraceous; more or less tuberculate (grandinioid), under 50x lens with projecting cystidia; margin "mostly abrupt, often continuing in branched rhizomorphs, which can also be found in the substrate", especially under bark or in much decayed wood, (Eriksson)
Microscopic: SPORES 4-4.5 x 3-3.5 microns, elliptic, smooth, inamyloid, acyanophilic, thin-walled; BASIDIA 4-spored, 15-20 x 3.5-5 microns, clavate or subcylindric, basally tapering, sometimes with a short stem-like part, with basal clamp connection; CYSTIDIA of two types: 1) "encrusted cystidia in varying numbers, in some specimens numerous and easily visible, in others few", size variable, in well developed specimens 60-100 x 10-15 microns, in others not exceeding 50 x 6 microns, encrustation especially in projecting cystidia "coarse, consisting of double-pyramidic crystals, in enclosed cystidia more or less dissolved and the whole cystidium changing to yellow", [illustrated as more or less cylindric], 2) small gloeocystidia, relatively few, 30-40 x 3-5 microns, fusiform, thin-walled, containing small oil droplets, turning dark blue in sulfovanillin, in rare cases with an apical rounded appendage; HYPHAE monomitic, hyphae 2-3 microns wide, densely branched and irregularly interwoven, thin-walled, with clamp connections, "in some specimens a layer of parallel hyphae next to the substrate, in old fruitbodies sometimes strata of parallel hyphae in the subicular trama", in mature fruitbodies subicular hyphae colored more or less yellow, (Eriksson)
Habitat / Range
on decayed wood, mostly of conifers, but also on hardwood, (Eriksson); Abies (fir), Ostrya (hophornbeam), Picea (spruce), Pinus (pine), Populus, Pseudotsuga (Douglas-fir), Quercus (oak); associated with a white rot, (Ginns)
