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

Summary:
Features include 1) light to dark brown fruitbodies that are vase-shaped, funnel-shaped, or in rosettes, 2) the upperside with radiating silky fibrils or small scales, margin usually fringed or splitting and paler, 3) the underside wrinkled or papillate or smooth, 4) stem absent or short and lateral to central, 5) flesh thin and tough, 6) odor mild to earthy, 7) growth often in clusters on the ground, (sometimes shelf-like on plant stems), and 8) spores sparsely spiny. Thelephora terrestris causes smothering disease of coniferous seedlings in nature and in nurseries, but harms only slow growing seedlings and is of benefit in its role as a mycorrhiza former, (Ginns).

Distribution in North America includes BC, WA, OR, ID, AB, MB, NF, ON, PQ, AK, AL, AZ, CA, CT, IA, IN, MA, ME, MI, MN, MT, NC, ND, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, SC, SD, and WY, (Ginns). It widely distributed as far south as central CA and GA, (Phillips). It is also found in Jamaica, Brazil, Uruguay, Europe, South Africa, China, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, and is the commonest Thelephora of north temperate regions, (Corner).

Fruiting body:
usually vase-shaped to fan-like, sometimes bracket-like or shelf-like on plant stems; cap 2-5cm wide or forming rosettes or clusters up to 12cm wide, margin usually fringed, splitting; brown to reddish brown or chocolate brown to grayish brown or fuscous, often darker when old, margin often paler or whitish, underside some shade of brown; dry, with radiating silky fibrils or small scales, underside smooth or wrinkled, (Arora), fertile undersurface clay brown or pallid, smooth or irregularly wrinkled, (Phillips), underside smooth or with radiating wrinkles at first, becoming finely and unevenly warty, (McKnight), up to 5cm across and up to 7cm high, (Schalkwijk-Barendsen), "pileate, subsessile, imbricating, dimidiate or spuriously infundibuliform from concrescence", in masses up to 12cm wide, "often in imbricating rosettes, varying effuso-reflexed and resupinate", caps up to 6cm wide, more or less ascending, unilateral, soft; upper side colored ferruginous to dark brown, blackish when old, varying to purplish or fuscous rufescent; upper surface tomentose, fibrillose, strigosofibrillose, or fibrillosely scaly; margin white, smooth, even, then fimbriate and incised; underside (the spore-bearing surface) fuscous, pale fawn, brown chocolate or rufescent umber, finely and unevenly papillose, somewhat radially rugulose, rarely smooth, (Corner)

Flesh:
very thin, tough, (Arora), about 0.1cm thick, floccose-coriaceous, fibrous, colored as surface, (Corner)

Stem:
when present, lateral to central, short, thin, tough, colored like cap or paler, (Arora), none or very short (Phillips)

Odor:
mild or earthy (Arora), none (Corner), like moldy earth (Lincoff(2))

Taste:
not distinctive (McKnight)

Microscopic:
spores 8-12 x 6-9 microns, elliptic-angular, warted (often minutely so), (Arora), spores 8-12 x 6-9 microns, angular-elliptic, sparsely spiny, (Phillips), 8-12 x 6-9 microns, angularly elliptic, more or less lobate, rather sparsely echinulate with spines 0.5 microns long, varying to nearly smooth, one to several droplets; fuscous purple, violaceous ferruginous, or purple umber; basidia 40-90 x 8-12 microns, 2-4 sterigmata 6-8.5 microns long; cystidia none; hyphae 3-10(12) microns wide, with clamp connections, with distinctly thickened brownish walls 0.5-1.5 microns thick, branched at a wide angle, fibrillose-fasciculate, not cyanescent in KOH but the hyphal fibrils of the flesh turning dark brown, (Corner)

Spore Deposit:
purplish brown (Arora), purplish to purplish brown (Phillips)