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

Summary:
Also listed in Polypores category. As a member of Polyporaceae it is not normally grouped with the gilled mushrooms, but the pores are usually somewhat gill-like in appearance. Gloeophyllum sepiarium is annual to perennial, shelf-like or bracket-like, leathery when fresh, rigid when dry, with a brown often zonate cap and yellow-brown to rusty-brown flesh and pores. It causes wood to rot and turn red. It is common.

Gloeophyllum sepiarium has been found in BC, WA, OR, ID, also AB, MB, NWT, NB, NL, NS, ON, PE, QC, SK, YT, AK, AL, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, FL, GA, IA, IN, KS, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MS, MT, NC, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OH, PA, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WI, WV, WY, and circumglobal through USSR, Japan and China to Europe, (Gilbertson). It is also found in Africa (Breitenbach).

Cap:
2-12cm broad, shelf-like or bracket-like, more or less fan-shaped, leathery when fresh, rigid when dry; rusty brown to dark brown or maroon brown, often with yellow or orangish zones but sometimes fading to grayish, "margin orange, yellow, or whitish when actively growing"; dry, hairy to nearly smooth, "concentrically zoned or ridged and often radially wrinkled", (Arora), up to 7cm wide, 12cm long, and 0.6-0.8cm thick at base of cap, without a stem, semicircular or rosette-shaped, often imbricate (shingled) in clusters from a common base, or fused laterally, "tough and flexible, margin sharp and slightly wavy"; upper surface at first bright yellowish brown then darker reddish brown and finally grayish to black; "when young and along the margin finely tomentose, in age the hyphae agglutinate and the surface becomes tufted, hirsute to hispid or scrupose with coarse protuberances, finally more or less smooth in zones mixed with narrow, more persistent hispid bands", often giving different colored zones in older specimens, (Gilbertson), on the underside of wood may grow entirely flat with gills exposed, (Breitenbach)

Flesh:
0.1-0.5cm thick, yellow brown to rusty brown, (Arora), up to 0.5cm thick, denser next to the tubes than toward upper surface, dark brown, (Gilbertson)

Gills:
forming close gills, often fused to form elongated pores or sometimes the surface entirely poroid or even tooth-like; ocher to yellow brown or rusty brown becoming brownish when old, (Arora), with anastomosing dense gill-like structures, 15-20 per centimeter behind the margin, "more rarely mixed with poroid areas with rounded to irregular, sinuous, radially elongated pores, about 1-2 per mm", edges of gills light golden brown in active growth, later umber brown, side surface of gills ochraceous to pale brown, usually distinctly lighter than the flesh and the trama, up to 0.7cm deep, (Gilbertson)

Stem:
absent

Odor:
no particular odor (Lincoff(1))

Taste:
no particular taste (Lincoff(1)), mild to somewhat bitter (Breitenbach)

Microscopic spores:
spores 9-13 x 3-5 microns, cylindric, smooth, inamyloid, colorless; basidia "narrowly clavate, 18-30 x 4.5-7 microns, some elongated to 110 microns, with basal clamp"; cystidia abundant, not or only slightly projecting, 25-95 x 3-7 microns, subulate to obtuse, thin-walled to thick-walled by age, usually smooth, more rarely with a small crown of crystals, some cystidia extremely elongated; hyphal system trimitic, generative hyphae 2.5-4 microns wide, thin-walled to thick-walled and with clamp connections, skeletal hyphae dominate in the fruitbody, especially in upper context and trama, up to 6 microns wide, "golden brown, straight, thick-walled", binding hyphae few, up to 4.5 microns wide at base, light golden brown, "tortuous and with relatively short branches, only seen in older parts of context", (Gilbertson), spores 8-13 x 3-5 microns, cylindric, smooth, (Arora), spores 7.5-8.5 x 2.5-3 [sic] microns, (Lincoff(1)), spores 9-13 x 3-5 microns, (Lincoff(2))

Spore deposit:
white (Arora)