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

Summary:
Also listed in Cups and Crusts categories. Features include growth on attached dead or damaged willow branches, at first growing flat, but loosening along the margin to resemble shallow orange to wine-red cups, which then become confluent. Microscopic characters include cylindric spores that are smooth, iodine negative, and colorless; large basidia that protrude from a dense layer of dendrohyphidia; and monomitic hyphal system with hyphae that turn blue in sulfovanilline, have clamp connections, and are strongly agglutinated by gelatinous interhyphal substance.

Cytidia salicina is found in BC, WA, OR, ID, and also MB, NB, NF, NS, ON, PQ, YT, AK, AL, CO, CT, IN, LA, MA, ME, MI, MN, MT, NC, ND, NH, NM, NY, OH, PA, VA, VT, WI, WV, and WY, (Ginns), Europe including Switzerland, and Asia, (Breitenbach), France, Sweden, central and eastern Europe, and north Asia, (Eriksson), and Algeria, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Norway, and Sweden, (Cooke).

Fruiting body:
when young disc-shaped to slightly plate-shaped to cup-shaped, irregularly rounded to oblong, 0.5-1cm in size, "with a pointlike attachment on underside, later coalescing in rows to form bands often several decimeters long", up to 0.05-0.08cm thick, elastic, gelatinous, tough, when dry shriveled and crustose, corneous [horny] and hard; bright orange to wine-red, drying dull wine-red; "when moist smooth, pruinose and dull, slightly verrucose-tuberculate", drying dull, with inrolled margin, (Breitenbach), resupinate [growing flat], loosening along margin to become cup-shaped, almost umbilicate, and looking like a discomycete, about 1cm wide, but sometimes confluent to larger irregular structures, when wet coriaceous [leathery] to somewhat gelatinous, soft, pliable, when dry corneous [horny], hard and brittle; "orange red when young, then dark red to violaceous red", "smooth, even or when wet somewhat tuberculate", at first bald, when fertile pruinose from spores and projecting basidia; margin "more or less revolute, esp. in the dry state", outside "covered by crystals and therefore whitish, farinose or finely floccose", (Eriksson), spore deposit white (Buczacki)

Microscopic:
spores 12.5-17.5 x 4-5 microns, cylindric, slightly allantoid [curved], smooth, iodine negative, colorless, with many small droplets; basidia 4-spored, 80-100 x 7-9 microns, narrowly clavate, with basal clamp connection; cystidia none; dendrohyphidia in hymenium 2.5-3 microns wide, "very densely interwoven and imbedded in a gelatinous substance, gnarled, strongly branched, brownish", +/- thick-walled, stain bluish in sulfovanillin; hyphal system monomitic, hyphae 2-4 microns wide, thin-walled to thick-walled, septa with clamp connections, stain bluish in sulfovanillin, (Breitenbach), spores 12-18 x 4-5 microns, allantoid [curved sausage-shaped], smooth, inamyloid, acyanophilic; basidia 4-spored, very large, 75-100 x 8-11 microns (according to Bourdot 60-225 x 7-9 microns), young basidia "develop within the dendrohyphidial layer and protrude at maturity"; cystidia none, dendrohyphidia numerous, richly branched, forming a dense layer, light yellowish brown, best seen on young fruiting bodies as they seem to disintegrate to some degree as basidia develop, (best studied in KOH heated close to boiling over a flame, when the other hyphae will swell and the dendrohyphidia will not), stain strongly in sulfovanillin; hyphal system monomitic, hyphae about 2-3 microns wide, thin-walled to slightly thick-walled, mostly straight, sparsely septate and with clamp connections at all septa, strongly agglutinated by gelatinous interhyphal substances, all hyphae blue or violaceous blue in sulfovanillin, (Eriksson)