Summary: Features include minute, yellowish brown cup-shaped fruitbodies with a dark reddish brown powdery coating on the exterior, almost no stem, growth on branches of pine and other conifers, and microscopic characters.
Microscopic: spores 12-14 x 5-6 microns, elliptic-fusiform, colorless, non-septate, sometimes 2-seriate in upper part of ascus; asci up to 80 x 15 microns, cylindric-clavate, broadly rounded in upper part, pore not blue with iodine; paraphyses about 2 microns thick, slender, colorless, "septate, swollen to 4-5 microns at the clavate tips when are embedded in a layer of firm mucilage, contents yellowish, oily", (Dennis), spores 10-14 x 5-7 microns, elliptic, 1-seriate or partly 2-seriate; asci 8-spored, reaching length 100-120 microns and width 12-18 microns, cylindric-clavate; paraphyses about 2 microns wide, simple, stout, slightly enlarged in upper part, pale yellowish, (Seaver), spores 12-14 x 5-6 microns, broadly elliptic to fusoid, non-septate, guttulate; asci inamyloid; paraphyses colorless, (Hansen)
Notes: Cenangium ferruginosum is found in northeastern North America to OR, CA and AL, (Seaver), and WA (Kanouse). It is also found in Europe including United Kingdom (Dennis), and Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, (Hansen). There are collections from BC at the Pacific Forestry Centre.
Habitat and Range
SIMILAR SPECIES
Cenangium acuum grows on Juniperus as well as Pinus. It has smaller fruitbodies (0.1-0.2cm) and the spores are narrowly elliptic to cylindric, (10-16 x 4-6 microns). (Hansen). R. Bandoni deposited collections at University of British Columbia of Cenangium alniellum, Cenangium griseum, and Cenangium vacinii.
Habitat
singly or in small clusters on dead twigs and small branches of Pinus, (Dennis), "gregarious, usually occurring in cespitose clusters", "on branches of various species of Pinus, Abies, Picea and probably other conifers", (Seaver), on twigs and small branches of Pinus, (Hansen)