Summary: Diagnostic characters are the yellow color, the flat habit, and microscopically, the skeletal hyphae, and the conspicuous thick-walled incrusted cystidia. The description is derived from Gilbertson(1).
Microscopic: spores 5-8.5 x 3-4 microns, cylindric-elliptic, smooth, inamyloid, colorless; basidia 4-spored, 25-30 x 6-8 microns, clavate, with basal clamp; cystidia frequent in hymenial layer, 20-55 x 12-25 microns, projecting to 15 microns, "ventricose, thick-walled, usually capitately incrusted with coarse crystalline material", colorless, some branched at the base and appearing rooted; hyphal system dimitic: contextual generative hyphae 2-4 microns wide, colorless, thin-walled, with occasional branching and abundant clamp connections, contextual skeletal hyphae 2-3.5 microns wide, colorless, with thickened walls, without clamp connections but with occasional simple septa, "tramal hyphae similar, faint amyloid reaction visible in tramal tissue"
Notes: Auriporia aurea is known in BC from one collection (Ginns(28)). It has been found in OR, AB, SK, ME, NM, and NY, (Gilbertson).
Habitat and Range
SIMILAR SPECIES
Auriporia pileata Parmasto was collected by J. Ginns in the eastern foothills of Alberta''s Rocky Mountains, but has not been found elsewhere in North America - it has caps, has allantoid spores measuring 5 x 1.0-1.5 microns, and lacks skeletal hyphae, (Ginns(28)). See also SIMILAR section of Ceriporiopsis pseudoplacenta.