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Species Information
Summary: Skeletocutis odora is characterized by a strong garlic-like odor when fresh, and microscopically by allantoid spores and few skeletal hyphae. Polyporus odorus Peck is a synonym but not Polyporus odorus Sommerf.: Fr. The description is derived from Gilbertson(1). It is apparently rare in eastern North America but common in the southwest, especially on Ponderosa pine, (Gilbertson).
Skeletocutis odora has been found in BC, (Ginns(27)). It has also been found in OR, NB, AK, AZ, NM, NY, TX, and PA, (Gilbertson). Note that some records could represent the more recently described Skeletocutis subodora.
Cap: growing flat on wood with pore surface exposed, up to 0.6cm thick, separable, "hard but rather brittle when fresh, drying cartilaginous and dense", margin white to cream, finely fimbriate (fringed)
Flesh: cottony; white to cream
Pores: 4-6 per mm, angular when fresh, "drying more irregular and in parts compressed or collapsed"; white, drying more brownish; tube layer up to 0.8cm thick, "yellowish brown when dry and rather brittle and contrasting with the much paler context"
Odor: garlic-like when fresh
Microscopic: spores 4.5-6 x 1-1.5 microns, allantoid, inamyloid, colorless; basidia 12-16 x 4-5 microns, clavate, with basal clamp connection; cystidia none, but "fusoid non-projecting cystidioles may occur scattered among the basidia, but often difficult to observe in old hymenia, 10-12 microns long"; hyphal system dimitic, generative hyphae 2-4.5 microns wide, with clamp connections, thin-walled, skeletal hyphae rather few, 2.5-4 microns wide, thick-walled to semisolid, straight and unbranched
Habitat / Range
annual, on dead conifers, causes a brown rot
Similar Species
Skeletocutis subodora has a subiculum 0.1-0.4cm thick (compared with barely 0.1cm thick in S. odora), it has relatively broad non-allantoid spores, it has conspicuous large cystidioles, and the context is monomitic, (Vlasak).
