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

Summary:
Features include 1) medium sized, somewhat spherical fruitbodies that are whitish to cream-colored but become more grayish or yellow-brownish, 2) a thick outer layer with truncate pyramidal warts about 1.3cm wide, 3) a thin, fragile inner layer, 4) a white spore mass that becomes yellow then brown or purplish brown, 5) growth in the mountains under conifers, 6) round, slightly warty spores with pedicels up to 3 microns long, and 7) capillitium with short thorn-like branches. A variation with gray color, very rudimentary squamule formation, and spores 4-6(7-12) microns in diameter (more giant spores and spores have thicker walls) was described by A.H. Smith from Idaho as var. fumosa, (Smith(31)), but this was based on a species name that was not valid at the time, (Seidl).

Calbovista subsculpta has been found in WA, ID, CA, and CO, (Morse), BC (in Redhead, and collection from BC deposited by Paul Kroeger at the University of British Columbia), and OR (Zeller). It occurs in the western mountains of North America including the following ranges: Cascades, Sierra Nevada, Olympics, Rocky Mountains and mountains of northern Idaho, (Seidl).

Outer Surface:
6-16cm across; peridium 2-layered, up to 1cm thick; outer layer pallid to cream, becoming light yellow-brown when old, "forming areolate patches which rupture irregularly", (Seidl), averaging 8(16)cm wide by 9cm high, often pleated and contracted toward the rooting base, outer layer thick, coriaceous [leathery], (quite thin toward the base), "broken into irregular three to six sided pyramids - usually blunt, sometimes pointed", the pyramids 0.5-0.8cm thick on top of fruitbody, "gradually becoming shorter on sides", pyramids showing parallel markings on their sides, (Morse), warts like pyramids with their tops cut off, about 1.3cm wide at bases and nearly as high, (Ammirati), nearly spherical or sometimes a bit broader, "covered with flattened warty scales with grayish tips and brownish hairs at the center", (Phillips), 8-16cm across, 9cm high, spherical to pear-shaped; whitish to dingy, tips of scales grayish; outer layer thick, felty, leathery, broken into irregular 3-6-sided low truncate pyramids, usually blunt but sometimes pointed, pyramids 0.5-0.8cm high at top of fruitbody but thinner toward bottom, sides of pyramids with parallel transverse lines, (Ramsey)

Inner layer:
extremely thin, shiny, depressed into areas by the heavy pyramidal plates of the outer layer, (Morse), fragile, fractures very early as the spore mass dries out, leaving the spore mass exposed in cracks between scales, (McKnight)

Spore Mass:
white when immature, becoming dark brown to purplish brown when mature, (Seidl), passes through color changes when maturing - "white to sulphur yellow, to golden brown or mummy brown (Ridgway), to dark umber", deliquescence of spore mass "free but never complete", (Morse)

Stem:
rooting sterile base: a quarter to a third of the spore-mass consisting of chambers of moderate size that persist after spore dispersal and "become more or less purplish with weathering", (Morse), often pleated and contracted toward a rooting base; sterile base a quarter to a third of spore-mass, (Ramsey)

Odor:
none (Miller)

Taste:
pleasant (Miller)

Microscopic:
spores 3-5 x 3-5 microns, round, verrucose, with pedicel up to 3.0 microns long, ochraceous brown to dark brown in mass, (Seidl), spores 3-5 x 3-5 microns, round, smooth to faintly warted, ochraceous brown, with one droplet, with colorless pedicel up to 2.5 microns long, epispore 0.5 microns thick; basidia 4-spored, 10-25 x 5-7.5 microns, clavate; capillitium "free, consisting of short, discrete units with abundant antler-like branching, much entangled", "secondary branches bluntly pointed, not varying much in width from main branch", "threads 5-10 microns wide, wall thick up to 2.5 microns, becoming thinner towards the tips", not septate, "not pitted, ochraceous yellow, concolorous", (Morse), spores 3-5 x 3-5 microns, nearly smooth; capillitial threads with "short thorn-like branches", (McKnight)