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Species Information
Summary: Auriscalpium vulgare is distinctive with dark brown color, a lateral cap, short crowded spines on the underside, a thin stem, and growth on Douglas-fir cones.
It is found in WA (Hall), and BC (Redhead(5)). It is widely distributed in Europe (including France) and in the north and central United States (including ME), also in Canada (including ON), Mexico, and Japan, (Coker). It has been reported from AB (Schalkwijk-Barendsen). The University of British Columbia has collections from BC and AB, and the University of Washington has collections from WA, OR, ID, AB, ON, PQ, MI, and MT. Desjardin(6) records it from CA.
Cap: 1-2(4)cm wide, kidney-shaped, broadly convex to flat or slightly depressed; brown to dark brown, margin often paler; dry, covered with dense fibrils or hairs, margin fringed, (Arora), convex - kidney-shaped; liver-brown, chocolate, or cocoa; hispid, (Hall), kidney-shaped to almost circular; sometimes zoned, (Lincoff(1)), attached to stem at a notch in the side (Coker)
Flesh: "thin, tough, pliant"; "white to pale brown", (Arora), leathery; white, delimited by a black line from the hairy layer, (Lincoff(1)), 0.1cm thick, tough, leathery; white, (Coker)
Teeth: 0.1-0.3cm long, fine, crowded; "whitish to flesh-colored, sometimes darkening to brown", (Arora); up to 0.25cm long, white to yellowish white (Hall), first violet-brown then whitish from spores (Lincoff(1))
Stem: 2-10cm x 0.05-0.3cm, equal or enlarged slightly in lower part, usually lateral; rusty-brown to dark brown; densely hairy, especially in lower part, (Arora), 3-7cm x 0.05-0.2cm, lateral, pliable; rust-brown to dark brown; hispid, (Hall), with grayish hairs on a dark brown background (Lincoff(1)), nearly white, covered with short close brown hairs like those on cap, the protected base thickened to about 0.4cm by a mat of long brown hairs, (Coker)
Odor: mild (Lincoff(1))
Taste: slightly peppery (Lincoff(1))
Microscopic: "spores 4.5-6 x 3-3.5 microns, round or nearly round, smooth or minutely spiny, amyloid", (Arora), spores 4.7-5.3 x 3.3-5.3 microns, nearly round, smooth or minutely punctate-roughened, amyloid, cyanophilous; hymenial cystidial elements thin-walled, not incrusted; hyphae of teeth 2.0-2.7 microns wide, with abundant clamp connections, (Hall), spores usually with one prominent oil droplet (Tylutki)
Spore Deposit: white (Arora, Hall)
Habitat / Range
primarily on (often buried) Douglas-fir cones in the Pacific Northwest, (Trudell), single or in groups of two or three on rotting, often buried conifer cones, or sometimes on thick debris made up partly of decaying cones, (Arora), single or in groups of two or three on Pseudotsuga menziesii (Douglas-fir) cones buried in moss (Hall), on fallen rotting pinecones, also reported on Douglas-fir cones, (Lincoff(2)), on cones, typically ponderosa pine or Douglas-fir, (Tylutki), on pine cones, occasionally on spruce, Douglas-fir, and fir cones; summer and fall, (Miller), recorded mostly on Douglas-fir, but twice on Sugar Pine (Pinus lambertiana) cones in the Sierra Nevada foothills (MykoWeb)
