Summary:
Features include small size, single or rosette form, funnel-shaped caps, thin bright orange brown flesh that is not zoned, and orange brown stem with a felty base. The description derived from Coker is for the type collection. Hall(3) does not mention this species for Washington but does include H. auratile which Harrison(4) does not include among North American Hydnellum species known to them: it is possible that the two names are referring to the same taxon in the Pacific Northwest. The two taxa are close enough that Franklin(1) reassigns a collection identified as H. conigenum from California to H. aurantile [sic] on the basis that the nearly 5cm preserved cap is too large for H. conigenum. According to Harrison(3), it is common in the Pacific Northwest.

Chemical Reactions:
when fresh, KOH turns flesh drab, after drying flesh turns dull olivaceous with KOH, (Harrison)

Odor:
faint to lacking, (McKnight), none to farinaceous (Harrison(3))

Taste:
strongly farinaceous, (McKnight, Harrison(3))

Microscopic:
spores 4.0-5.5 x 3.5-4.0 microns, nearly round to broadly elliptic, and angular, (McKnight), spores 4-5.5 x 3.5-4.5 microns, nearly round to oblong, angular, "with young spores showing a prominent mucro"; dark as though slightly amyloid; hyphae heavily incrusted, +/- 3 microns wide in teeth and up to 6 microns wide in cap, frequently swollen at septa, no clamp connections seen, numerous hyphae seen in hymenial layer with heavy concentrations of reddish granules, granules do not darken in Melzer''s reagent, (Harrison(3)), 4-5 microns in diameter, round, according to Peck, but 4-5 x 3.8-4.2 microns, nearly round, rather bluntly angled and warted according to Coker; basidia 4-spored, about 5.5 microns thick; hyphae of hard cap context about 3.8-6 microns thick, densely packed, parallel, rarely branched and with few cross walls, moderately thick-walled ("sometimes very irregularly and heavily thickened and with a good many encrusting granules"), a few clamp connections seen, (Coker)

Spore Deposit:
[presumably brown]

Notes:
Hydnellum conigenum is found from NM to BC and the Great Lakes region, (McKnight). It is reported also from FL, (McKnight) and ID (Coker). Collections were seen from NM to BC, including the type locality ID, and there is a collection from MI, (Harrison(3)).

EDIBILITY

no (McKnight)