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Species Information
Summary: A good field character is the lemon-yellow pore surface that characteristically cracks into square pieces 0.5-1.5cm long and wide. Other features include flat growth on wood with the pore surface exposed, a bitter taste, allantoid spores, and a weak amyloid reaction of the skeletal hyphae. The description is derived from Gilbertson(1) except where noted.
Antrodia xantha has been found in BC, WA, OR, ID, AB, NF, NS, ON, SK, YT, AK, AZ, CA, CO, FL, MI, MN, MS, MT, NC, ND, NH, NJ, NM, NY, PA, SC, SD, TN, UT, VA, WI, WV, and WY, and circumglobally in the conifer zone (Europe, Asia), (Gilbertson).
Cap: growing flat on conifer wood with pore surface exposed, often widely spread out and up to 0.5cm thick, or as numerous rounded caps or nodulose knobs on a more or less vertical substrate, firmly attached, soft when fresh, crumbly and chalky when dry, margin narrow; pore surface lemon-yellow to sulphur yellow to cream and margin white when fresh, fading overall when dry to white or pale cream; smooth when young, but when older characteristically cracking into square pieces 0.5-1.5cm long and wide
Flesh: thin; white
Pores: 5-7 per mm, round; lemon-yellow to sulphur yellow to cream when fresh, fading when dry to white or pale cream; tubes cream to white
Taste: bitter
Microscopic: spores 4-5 x 1-1.5 microns, allantoid [curved sausage-shaped], thin-walled, inamyloid, colorless; basidia 4-spored, 10-15 x 4-5 microns, clavate; cystidia none, but "pointed, non-projecting cystidioles occur scattered among the basidia, 10-14 x 3-4 microns"; hyphal system dimitic, generative hyphae 2-4 microns wide, thin-walled, with clamp connections, skeletal hyphae predominant, 3-6 microns wide, "semisolid, straight to slightly sinuous, unbranched to occasionally dichotomously branched", "weakly amyloid, but reaction variable and most easily seen in hyphal masses and in fresh condition"
Spore Deposit: white (Buczacki)
Habitat / Range
annual, usually on conifers, often in open and dry localities and commonly on wood without bark, more rarely on hardwoods, especially on Salix (willow) species, causes a brown cubical rot, (Gilbertson), probably all year (Buczacki)
Similar Species
Antrodia alpina has larger pores 2-4 per mm, and is reddish with KOH, (Gilbertson). Fibroporia radiculosa has larger elliptic spores. Diplomitoporus rimosus is distinguished by its host preference for live and dead juniper, "association with a white rot, tubular cystidia, and lack of amyloid walls in the skeletal hyphae", (Ginns(28)). See also SIMILAR section of Sidera lenis.
