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

Summary:
Features include a zoned yellow-brown to dark brown thin cap, leathery brown flesh that is duplex in stem, short teeth that are whitish becoming ashy gray-brown with paler tips and staining vinaceous buff when bruised, a usually slender stem colored like the cap, a fragrant odor, and a white spore deposit. Hall notes that collections vary from thin-fleshed, delicate, small specimens to very large, thick-fleshed, robust ones.

Phellodon tomentosus is sometimes abundant in the Pacific Northwest and is found also in CA, (Arora). It is found specifically in WA (Hall), BC (collections at Pacific Forestry Centre determined by K.A. Harrison), WA, OR, and AK (collections at the University of Washington), and ME, NC, NH, NY, NC, TN, Italy, and reported from NS and NB, (Coker). It is found in MI and generally throughout conifer areas in northern regions throughout North America and Europe, (Harrison).

Cap:
1.5-4(5.5)cm, often fused with other caps, flat to depressed or broadly funnel-shaped; white when very young, soon "concentrically zoned with yellow-brown, cinnamon-brown, darker brown, etc., the growing margin usually remaining white", but bruising brownish; "dry, smooth to ridged or corrugated, minutely hairy (tomentose)", margin felty, (Arora), 1-6cm across, flat but usually depressed to umbilicate at center, margin wavy, often elevated, and thick; "sepia to light brown, pallid to vinaceous buff on margin, when wet dark brown in center", typically zoned; radially fibrillose, streaked, disc often pitted, margin tomentose when actively growing, (Harrison), up to 5.5cm across (fruitbody up to 6cm tall), flat to depressed or funnel-shaped, margin irregular, wavy, tapered; "pecan brown" to "Rood''s brown" or "Vandyke brown" ("tawny" to "ochraceous-tawny", "vinaceous-russet", "cameo brown" or "chocolate"), bruising "chocolate" to ''teak'' or ''earth-colored'' or ''grayish brown'', margin "terra cotta" to "vinaceous-russet" or "Mikado brown" ("orange-cinnamon", "cinnamon" or "tawny"), bruising ''chocolate'' or ''teak''; tomentose, smooth to corrugated, (Hall), nearly flat or depressed centrally, nearly even or delicately irregular; zoned only in color, snuff brown and cinnamon; bald in center from collapse of felty surface; margin white or at least usually paler than the rest of cap, brown when rubbed, softly felted, (Coker), 2-6cm across, often fused with other caps and 10-20cm across, hazelnut-brown to gray-brown or reddish-brown, with darker zones toward center, margin whitish, (Breitenbach), margin thick, wavy, often turned upward, (McKnight)

Flesh:
thin, leathery, fibrous; brownish in cap, darker brown in stem, (Arora), 0.1-0.15cm thick, pliant, leathery; more or less light brown; in stem fibrous, zoned, duff included in base, (Harrison), up to 0.5cm thick, homogeneous, fibrous-leathery; brownish; in stem fibrous, with brownish tan outer corky layer and zoned dark brown inner layer, (Hall), tough, pliable, color of cap center, not zoned, (Coker), zoned, light brown in cap, red-brown to black-brown in stem, (Breitenbach)

Teeth:
0.1-0.3(0.5)cm, delicate, crowded, slightly decurrent; "whitish becoming pale cinnamon to brown with paler tips", (Arora), up to 0.2cm long, "decurrent to a line, crowded, pliant"; white, shaded with buff when old, staining vinaceous-buff when bruised, (Harrison), up to 0.5cm long, 10-14 per square mm, slightly decurrent, round in cross-section, fleshy, subulate [awl-shaped]; ''pale pink'' to "cinnamon-buff" or "buffy brown" ("army brown", "fawn color" or "wood brown"), bruising "Vandyke brown" to ''golden wheat'', (Hall), slightly decurrent to a clean line, white on margin, pale fawn when mature, (Coker), white then grayish (Breitenbach)

Stem:
1-5cm x 0.2-0.5(0.8)cm, usually central, equal or narrowing downward, stems usually separate even if several caps fused together; colored more or less like cap; "arising from spongy pad of brownish mycelium", (Arora), 2-5cm x 0.2-0.5cm, irregular in shape, expanding into cap, often flattened; colored as cap; unpolished, zonate, "arising from a felty layer of mycelium in the duff", (Harrison), 2-4cm x 0.8cm, central, elliptic in cross-section, tapered, base not swollen; "pale pinkish cinnamon" to "pinkish buff" or "orange-cinnamon" ("cinnamon", "sayal brown" or "mummy brown"), bruising "warm sepia" or "Verona brown", base colored the same as the rest of the stem, (Hall), "some stems arrested in development in the shape of pointed plugs of different heights", (Coker), light to dark brown, smooth to somewhat fibrillose but not tomentose (Breitenbach)

Chemical Reactions:
flesh turns black in KOH, gray to black in FeSO4, (McKnight), when fresh KOH blackens surface and flesh, but not when dried, when fresh FeSO4 turns disc grayish then black, and flesh grayish, but no reaction when fruitbody dried, (Harrison)

Odor:
usually fragrant (like fenugreek) (Arora), faint to slightly fragrant of fenugreek as fruitbodies dry, (Harrison), fenugreek to fungoid (Hall), faintly fragrant, not noticeably of fenugreek, more like rabbit tobacco (Gnaphalium obtusifolium), when dried, distinct of blackstrap molasses, (Coker), when drying like Maggi seasoning, (Breitenbach), faint, indefinite, pleasant, spicy when dry, (Buczacki)

Taste:
mild or slightly bitter (Arora), "mild or slightly sweetish with a slight biting reaction in the throat", (Harrison), none (Hall), faintly sweetish-bitter (Coker)

Microscopic:
spores 3-4.5 microns in diameter, round or nearly round, minutely spiny, (Arora), spores 3-4 microns in diameter, round to nearly round, finely echinulate, apiculate; basidia 4-spored, 20-25 x 4-5.3 microns; hyphae of cap about 4 microns wide, thin-walled, septate, in stem up to 6.3 microns wide, with thicker walls, branches rarely seen, (Harrison), spores 3.3-4.4 x 3.3-4.0 microns, round to nearly round, echinulate, inamyloid; basidia 4-spored, 35-43 x 3.3-5.3 microns, cylindroclavate; cystidia absent; hyphae up to 4.7 microns wide, colorless, thin-walled, septate, without clamp connections, (Hall), spores 3-4 x 2.5-3.5 microns (Breitenbach)

Spore Deposit:
white (Arora, Harrison)