Details about map content are available here Click on the map dots to view record details.
Species Information
Summary: Also listed in Polypores category. Echinodontium tinctorium forms hard hoof-shaped conks on hemlock and true fir, with cracked hairy blackish upper surface, grayish blunt spines, and rusty-orange flesh. The common name India paint fungus refers to its use by First Nations people in preparing war paint: in powdered form it was also used by shamans as medicine. It can also be used as a red dye for yarn.
It is found in BC, WA, OR, ID, AB, AK, AZ, CA, CO, MT, NM, NV, UT, WY, Mexico, and not elsewhere in the world, (Gilbertson).
Cap: 4-25cm broad, up to 15cm thick, hoof-shaped, very tough or woody, often perennial; upper surface dry, finely hairy to rough, often covered with moss, (Arora), up to 40cm wide, 30cm deep and 20cm thick, without a stem, hoof-shaped to flattened, usually developing under branch stubs, perennial; dark dull brown quickly becoming blackened, margin brown; hispid (with bristles) to matted-hirsute (matted, with long stiff hairs) at first, quickly becoming crustose and rimose, cracking radially and concentrically into rectangular blocks, sulcate (grooved), margin hispid to coarsely hirsute, (Gilbertson)
Flesh: very tough or woody; "bright orange to rusty-red or cinnamon", (Arora), up to 5cm thick, upper blackish crustose layer up to 0.2cm thick, the rest brick-red, with radially arranged fibers, and hard and woody in consistency, in older fruitbodies with a thick layer of fused older teeth below the fibrous flesh, (Gilbertson)
Teeth: 1-3cm spines, brittle, blunt, thick, flattened, grayish to pale olive-buff, sometimes with darker tips, (Arora), irregularly pore-like to maze-like at margin, the dissepiments quickly splitting to form flattened to cylindric teeth, which at first are thin and brittle but become thick, rigid and crowded by layering of the surface when old, the teeth up to 1.5cm long and 0.25cm thick, pale buff to pinkish buff when bearing spores, inner tissue becoming brick red as layering of spore-bearing surface progresses, (Gilbertson), teeth variable in color, eventually grayish then black, (Lincoff(1))
Odor: none (Miller)
Taste: none (Miller)
Microscopic: spores 5.5-8 x 3.5-6 microns elliptic, minutely spiny, amyloid, (Arora), spores 6-8 x 4.5-6 microns, elliptic, smooth to minutely echinulate, weakly to moderately amyloid, colorless, thick-walled; basidia 4-spored, 35-45 x 6.5-8 microns, narrowly clavate, with basal clamp connection; cystidia abundant, 25-65 x 8-17 microns, "becoming thick-walled, ventricose to subulate, dark reddish brown in KOH and Melzer''s reagent, some paler at the tip, fusoid to mammillate, apically incrusted but incrustation dissolving readily in KOH and Melzer''s reagent"; hyphal system dimitic, context generative hyphae 2.5-6 microns wide, thin-walled, colorless in KOH, with clamp connections and simple septa, occasionally branched, context skeletal hyphae 3-6.5 microns wide, thick-walled, bright reddish brown in KOH and Melzer''s reagent, with rare branching, nonseptate, trama generative hyphae 2-5 microns wide, with abundant clamp connections, trama skeletal hyphae similar to those in context, (Gilbertson)
Spore Deposit: white when obtainable (Arora)
Habitat / Range
single or several on living or occasionally downed conifers such as fir and hemlock, (Arora), primarily on Abies (true fir) and Tsuga (hemlock), rarely on other conifers, causes a yellowish laminated to stringy heartrot of living conifers, the main cause of heartrot and volume loss in true firs in western coniferous forests, (Gilbertson)
