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

Summary:
{See also Dacrymyces Table.} Dacrymyces chrysospermus is characterized by large, typically bright orange fruiting bodies that dry orange red to orange brown, distinctly 7-septate spores, and lack of clamp connections (McNabb). It is a common fungus in the Pacific Northwest. Advice about edibility differs: not edible (Phillips), edible, but should be boiled or steamed not sauteed, (Lincoff).

It is found in BC, WA, OR, ID, AB, NB, NF, NS, ON, PQ, YT, AL, AZ, CA, CT, IN, LA, MA, MI, MN, NH, NM, NY, PA, SC, VT, and WI, (Ginns), temperate North America and eastern Asia, (Martin), Finland, Germany, Japan, Christmas Island, Lord Howe Island, Mauritius, Socotra, South Africa, and Tibet in China, (McNabb), Belorussia, Estonia, and Russia, (Raitviir), United, Kingdom, and reported from Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Italy, Norway, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, and New Caledonia, (Reid).

Fruiting body:
forming masses up to 6cm in extent, variable in shape, pulvinate [cushion-shaped], fan-shaped, or stoutly stemmed with spathulate, cup-shaped, convoluted, or plate-shaped cap, often coalescing to form erect, brain-shaped or complicated stemless or stoutly stemmed masses up to 6cm across; bright orange when fresh, drying orange-red to orange-brown; stem and base of cap often with hairs, (McNabb), at first erupting in clusters, joining to form erect, petal-like, or brain-like masses up to 6cm in extent, tough-gelatinous, then soft, finally more or less deliquescent (liquefying); bright orange to deep orange-red, drying orange to red; attached by tough, white, rooting base, at times with stem and cap, (Martin)

Microscopic:
spores 16.5-23(26.5) x 5-7.5 microns, curved-cylindric, "relatively thin-walled with slightly thickened and distinct septa, tinted, apiculate", becoming 7-septate by maturity, germination by colorless oval conidia or by germ tubes; probasidia 50-83 x 4-6.5 microns, cylindric-subclavate, with basal septa, becoming bifurcate; hymenium consisting of basidia and occasionally simple cylindric dikaryophyses; internal hyphae "thin-walled, smooth or roughened, septate, clamp connections absent", hairs on stem and base of cap simple, cylindric or subclavate, externally roughened, thick-walled, (McNabb), spores 17-25 x 6-8 microns, cylindric, curved, finally 7-septate, deep orange in mass, yellow by transmitted light, conidia 2 x 1.5 microns, ovoid or somewhat elliptic; "internal hyphae smooth or rarely somewhat roughened, with occasional or frequent clamp-connections, these apparently lacking in some collections", (Martin), spores 17-25 x 6-8 microns, cylindric to sausage-shaped, smooth, becoming 8-10-celled, spore deposit yellowish, (Phillips), bearing a varying number of clavate, cortical hairs with thick gelatinous walls on stem and rooting base, (Kennedy)