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

Summary:
Features include pinkish, gelatinous-glutinous fruitbodies of various shapes on the shredded inner bark of Populus, on Prunus, and sometimes on other trees. At least on Populus there is a separate, usually prior occurrence of small, non-gelatinous, stemmed, cupulate, conidial apothecia with a membranous stellate enclosure. Craterocolla cerasi is common in Ladner, BC: "One thing that should be noted for this species is that the earlier stages generally are discoid anamorphs, small but clustered and conspicuous. This is a well formed, non-gelatinous apothecium with a membranous stellate closure. The basidiocarps often (?always) start to develop from one edge of the anamorph as a flat extension which expands to a single large foliaceous lobe. In mature basidiocarps, several such lobes may be grouped together - I can''t tell you whether these all come from one conidioma or from closely situated ones. The lobes are distinctly gelatinous, paler coloured than the cups. The most unusual thing about the habitat is that it frequently occurs on shredded inner bark of Populus, and especially on straps of the bark that have peeled away from large dead branches or trunks, fallen, and lodged on shrubs or even on the ground. It is often growing on dead, intact, fallen bark, on the shredded inner bark. I cannot tell you if it only occurs on suberized material - I have once collected one or two conidiomata on a dead, fallen tree - but growing from the pith. I have searched for it on Prunus but never found it. Nor have I ever found it in the fall or early spring. It occurs only if there has been snow or rain in the winter and if the temperatures have been low (below freezing for some time) prior to the development of the fungus." (R. Bandoni, pers. comm.).

C. cerasi occurs in BC and also elsewhere including Switzerland in Europe (Breitenbach(2) from which the following description is derived).

Fruiting body:
1-4(5)cm across, "variously formed, spread out flat and irregularly rounded, cerebriform, mesenterylike, or weakly cup-shaped, but also short-stalked and then plate-shaped and lobed, appressed tightly to the substrate and punctiform"; "upper surface smooth, gelatinous-glutinous, ocher-pink, gray-ocherish to salmon-colored"; consistency "somewhat tough, gelatinous, soft"; pycnidial form "turbinate, deeply urceolate, concolorous"

Microscopic:
spores 8-11 x 3.5-4.5 microns, allantoid, smooth, colorless, with droplets; (pycnospores (conidia) 6-8 x 2.5-3.5 microns); hypobasidia 9-10 microns in diam, round to oval, longitudinally septate, with 4 epibasidia that are sometimes very long; cystidia not seen; hyphae colorless, some septate with short cells, septa without clamp connections, covered with granules or droplets, 1.5-3 microns across, "among them are strongly sinuous hyphae without identifiable septa", 0.5-1.5 microns across