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

Summary:
Features include 1) resupinate growth on wood, 2) a whitish to ocherish fruitbody that is odontioid with dense, irregular, conic spines up to 0.3cm long (under a lens with brush-like tips), the consistency soft to fibrous, the margin fringed-tomentose to indeterminate, 3) spores that are nearly round to elliptic, smooth, inamyloid, and colorless, 4) cystidia that are long-cylindric, thick-walled except in the blunt tips, sometimes with knee-like bends, sometimes with secondary septa, and 5) a monomitic hyphal system, the hyphae cyanophilic, with clamp connections, with branches from or close to clamp connections.

Hyphodontia barba-jovis has been found in BC, NS, ON, PQ, IA, LA, MD, MI, NY, and SC, (Ginns), FL, PQ, Costa Rica, Brazil, Germany, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Kenya, and Taiwan, (Langer), Norway and Finland, (Eriksson), and Switzerland (Breitenbach).

Fruiting body:
resupinate, orbicular [circular], and confluent when growing on bark, more or less effused [spread out] on barkless wood, adnate [firmly attached], consistency when young soft, easily squeezed, when mature fibrous and rather tough; whitish pale when young, darkening to ochraceous and in postmature specimens pale brownish especially in the tips of the spines; odontioid with dense, irregular, conic aculei [spines], 0.1-0.3cm long, apically penicillate [brush-like] and often more or less cristulate [finely crested] from projecting hyphae and cystidia; "margin variable, fimbriate-tomentose or indeterminate", (Eriksson), resupinate, attached +/- loosely but closely appressed, "forming thin, fibrous-membranous patches" several centimeters across, consistency "fibrous, membranous, soft"; cream to ocherish, sometimes with slight greenish tint; with dense subulate [awl-shaped] spines, up to 0.05cm long, that are fringed and brush-like at the tip; "margin distinctly bounded to reticulate-porous and somewhat paler", (Breitenbach), spore deposit white (Buczacki)

Microscopic:
SPORES 4.5-5.5(6) x 3.5-4.5 microns, elliptic, smooth, thin-walled, with 1 droplet; CYSTIDIA numerous in hymenium and in the tips of the spines, 80-300 x 6-8 microns, cylindric, often flexuose and constricted, cyanophilic, thick-walled except in the apical part; "intercalary hyphal segments may be cystidioid"; hymenial cystidia often geniculate [with a knee-like bend], especially in the apical part of the spines; secondary septa without clamp connections occurring in the cystidia, rarely septa with clamp connections; HYPHAE monomitic, about 2-3 microns wide, distinct, cyanophilic, clamp connections at all septa, branches from or close to clamp connections, "somewhat thickwalled, more or less parallel and sparsely branched in the centre of the aculei, in the subiculum irregularly intertwined; subhymenial hyphae thinner and in mature fruitbodies forming a dense texture", (Eriksson), SPORES 4.5-6 x 3.5-4.5 microns, nearly round to oval, smooth, inamyloid, colorless; BASIDIA 4-spored, 15-25 x 5-6 microns, narrowly clavate, somewhat constricted, with basal clamp connection; LEPTOCYSTIDIA up to 280 x 8 microns, long and cylindric, colorless, cyanophilic, thick-walled, with blunt, thin-walled tips; HYPHAE monomitic, 2.5-4.5 microns wide, thin-walled to thick-walled, septa with clamp connections, (Breitenbach)