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

Summary:
Features include 1) resupinate growth on wood, 2) fruitbodies that are waxy becoming hard, creamish pale to honey-colored becoming ochraceous, and smooth becoming tuberculate and cracked, the margin abrupt to slightly pruinose, and the fruitbodies typically layered, 3) spores that are elliptic, smooth, and amyloid, 4) gloeocystidia that are numerous to rare, cylindric to clavate, colorless to yellowish, and sulfo-negative, and 5) a monomitic hyphal system, the hyphae densely arranged, and lacking clamp connections. Ginns(23) and Ginns(24) accept this species in Conferticium as Conferticium ochraceum (Fr.) Hallenb., but Stalpers(3) uses the name Gloeocystidiellum ochraceum.

Collections were examined from BC, WA, OR, ID, NS, PQ, CA, 14 collections found from North America, reported also from NT, AK, MA, NC, PA, (Ginns(24)). It also occurs in Europe including Finland, Norway, and Sweden, (Eriksson).

Fruiting body:
resupinate, at first thin but thickening to about 0.1cm, often reaching large dimensions, adnate [tightly attached] but when old detachable in small pieces, ceraceous [waxy] at first, with time firmer and hard when dried; creamish pale or melleous [honey-colored] at first, when old darker, ochraceous to ocher-brown; smooth at first then somewhat tuberculate and when old very rimose [cracked]; margin "as a rule not especially differentiated", (Eriksson), effused [spread out], 4cm x 3cm but often confluent, up to 0.067cm thick, typically stratose [layered]; pale yellow with a pink tint, "ivory yellow", "cream-buff", "light ochraceous-buff", "ochraceous-buff"; smooth, ceraceous [waxy], not cracked in young specimens, becoming strongly areolate [cracked like dried mud] in old fruitbodies, cracks extending to substrate; margin abrupt to slightly pruinose, colored as the rest of the surface, (Ginns(24))

Microscopic:
SPORES 3.5-5.5 x 2.0-3.0 microns, elliptic, adaxially slightly concave, smooth, amyloid, acyanophilic, thin-walled, "with a small, rounded, indistinct apiculus", (the two Washington collections with larger and somewhat differently shaped spores, compared with the others); BASIDIA 4-spored, 17.5-28.0 x 4.0-5.0 microns, clavate to cylindric, sterigmata 4-5 microns long; GLOEOCYSTIDIA numerous to rare, 35-120 x 4-8 microns, cylindric to clavate, contents colorless to yellowish in KOH, granular, sulfo-negative; HYPHAE monomitic; subiculum weakly amyloid in some collections; hyphae 2.0-4.0 microns wide, "compact, indistinct, pseudoparenchymatous", lacking clamp connections, typically stratose, encrusted with scattered crystals near the substrate, the walls thin to 1.2 microns thick, acyanophilic; hymenium and subhymenium weakly dextrinoid in some collections, (Ginns(24)), SPORES 4.5-6 x 3-3.5 microns, elliptic to somewhat oval, smooth, amyloid, thin-walled; BASIDIA 4-spored, 20-30 x 4-5 microns, subclavate, without clamp connections; GLOEOCYSTIDIA (= pseudocystidia) 40-60 x 4-5 microns, thin-walled, "filled with oily, granular, yellowish contents (in KOH)", best seen in young fruitbodies, in which they may be numerous; HYPHAE monomitic: hyphae 2-3.5 microns wide, thin-walled to somewhat thick-walled, cyanophilic, without clamp connections, "in a very dense parenchymatous context", with a thin layer of horizontal hyphae next to substrate, otherwise "of vertical, parallel, densely united hyphae", in perennial strata, (Eriksson)