Summary:
Features include 1) a convoluted fruitbody with a brownish olive to blackish brown surface, the peridium lacking or disappearing early, 2) a slate-colored spore mass with irregular cavities mostly radiating from the branching, percurrent columella, 3) a stem 0.2cm thick, and 4) microscopic characters including spores measuring 11-16 x 6.5-8 microns that develop 7-10 wavy striae, and 1-4-spored basidia. It is rarely collected (Trappe).
Collections were examined from BC and ID (Dodge). Pacific Northwest distribution is BC to ID and northern CA (Trappe(13)).
Outer Surface:
4cm across, cordate [heart-shaped], surface convoluted, "light brownish olive" to "mummy brown"
Stem:
stem 0.2cm thick; columella "branched, percurrent, gelified"
Interior:
"plumbeous-black", "slate color" in preservative, drying "fuscous-black", gelified; "cavities irregular, mostly radiating from the columella, empty"
Microscopic:
spores 11-16 x 6.5-8 microns, young spores oval to elliptic, smooth, becoming striate with 7-10 wavy striae, spores "English red" to "burnt sienna", short-pedicellate; basidia 1-4-spored, 20-26 x 9-10 microns, clavate, colorless, sterigmata less than half the length of the spores; cystidia 52-61 x 25-35 microns, obovoid, colorless, guttulate, often somewhat apiculate; paraphyses 4-5 microns wide, narrowly clavate, colorless, guttulate, septate, some knobbed at tip, some filiform; subhymenial layer "pseudoparenchymatous, of large angular cells"; septa about 300 microns thick, composed of highly gelified, colorless hyphae
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