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Species Information
Summary: Features include 1) resupinate, leathery growth on hardwood, or with projecting overlapping buff caps, the spore-bearing surface colored shades of violet, and smooth to slightly wrinkled, 2) a visible black line in flesh when cap cut in cross-section, 3) spores that are elliptic to cylindric, smooth, inamyloid, and colorless, 4) cystidia that are sparse, narrow-fusiform, projecting, and incrusted or not, 5) bladder-like hyphal ends in the subhymenium, and 6) a monomitic hyphal system, the hyphae with clamp connections.
Chondrostereum purpureum has been found in BC, WA, OR, ID, AB, MB, NB, NF, NS, ON, PE, PQ, SK, YT, AK, AL, CA, CT, DE, FL, GA, IA, IN, KS, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MT, ND, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, VA, VT, WI, WV, and WY, (Ginns), and Europe and Asia (Breitenbach).
Fruiting body: resupinate on wood, or with projecting overlapping caps, 0.5-2cm wide, sometimes in masses 10-50cm long, caps sometimes crimped or lobed; "light ocher-buff to cinnamon-buff; hairy to hairless and wrinkled"; spore-bearing surface light purple-drab to dark wine-buff, waxy and smooth to minutely powdery; consistency leathery, (Lincoff(2)), resupinate or having a cap that extends several millimeters to 4cm from the wood, forming patches several centimeters to several decimeters in extent, upper cap surface gray-whitish, indistinctly zoned, hirsute-tomentose [hairy-cottony], margin lighter, spore-bearing surface [under cap or exposed on surface] "pink-violet to dark violet, when old brown-violet", "smooth, undulating tuberculate to slightly wrinkled", margin distinctly bounded to slightly fringed; flesh 0.1-0.25cm thick, tough, in cross section a visible black line separates tomentum from flesh and spore-bearing surface; odor not characteristic, taste mild, (Breitenbach), resupinate or with a projecting cap, tough when fresh, brittle when dry, the cap white and tomentose, the spore-bearing surface "smooth and dark violaceous, purplish or brown-violaceous when fresh and wet", paler when dry; in vertical section the white tomentum of the cap is separated from the lower layers by a dark line visible to the naked eye, (Eriksson), cap surface "grayish to yellowish buff or pale cinnamon to darker brown, often with a distinct pale edge", hairy to tomentose; spore-bearing surface violet to brown-violet, smooth, and waxy-looking, (Trudell), spore deposit white (Buczacki)
Microscopic: SPORES 6.5-8 x 2.5-3.5 microns, elliptic to cylindric, smooth, inamyloid, colorless; BASIDIA 4-spored, 45-60 x 6-7 microns, narrowly clavate, with basal clamp connection; CYSTIDIA: leptocystidia 60-70 x 4.5-7.5 microns, fusiform, "some resembling stinging hairs, some incrusted", in subhymenium many conspicuous hyphae with bladder-like ends 7-15 microns across; HYPHAE monomitic 2.5-4 microns wide, thin-walled to thick-walled, with clamp connections, (Breitenbach), SPORES 5-8 x 2.5-3 microns, allantoid to subcylindric, smooth, inamyloid; BASIDIA 4-spored, about 50 x 5 microns, placed together in a very dense hymenium; CYSTIDIA sparse, 60-80 x 6-8 microns, projecting 25-50 microns, fusoid or obtuse, thin-walled, smooth or with crystalline deposits; HYPHAE "monomitic with clamped hyphae, thinwalled in the subhymenium, more or less thickwalled in the other parts of the fruitbody", hyphal width from 3 microns, (Eriksson)
Habitat / Range
saprophytic or parasitic on stumps, branches or trunks of hardwoods, rarely conifers; infected trees such as fruit trees develop a characteristic leaf change called "silver leaf" disease, (Eriksson), on a variety of conifers and hardwoods, the fungus produces toxins that produce silver leaf disease and ultimately kill branches or the entire tree, fruit bodies produced on old sticks, dead stems, dead stumps, logs, pulpwood, associated with a white rot, (Ginns), June to April, may persist for several years, on apple, plum, and other hardwoods, causes silver leaf disease of apple and plum trees, (Lincoff(2)), year round, with new growth between spring and fall, (Bacon)
Similar Species
Under some circumstances, old fruitbodies can be confused with Amylostereum (amyloid spores), Veluticeps (long, encrusted cystidia), Stereum, Peniophora (with strongly encrusted subulate cystidia), or Trichaptum abietinum (pores under hand lens), (Breitenbach).
