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Species Information
Summary: Features include a minute, white to pale yellowish brown basidiomycete fruitbody that is cup-shaped to disc-shaped with an upturned margin, white underside that is minutely tomentose, and absent stem. It grows scattered to crowded on rotten bark and wood, dead herbaceous stems, and rotten leaves. Microscopic characters include basidia. Pellidiscus pallidus is recognizable because of flattened, broadly but loosely attached fruitbodies, with only the margin upturned and incurved (when dry), sometimes crisped-lobed along margin, (Donk 1959).
It is found in BC, ON, MI, and NJ, (Ginns), and Czechoslovakia, France, Netherlands, Norway, and the United Kingdom, (Redhead).
Upper surface: usually about 0.1-0.2cm across, sometimes larger, at first cup-shaped, soon disc-shaped with upturned margin, circular, often becoming crenulate [scalloped] to lobed and crisped at margin; upper surface from snow white soon becoming pale yellowish brown, of somewhat waxy appearance, even, smooth to wrinkled, (Donk), 0.01-0.03cm [may be intended as 0.1-0.3 as more consistent with illustration], centrally or slightly eccentrically attached to substrate, "flattened bowl-shaped"; "inner spore-bearing surface smooth, white then very pale yellow-brown", (Buczacki)
Flesh: evenly thin throughout except at the slightly thicker margin (Donk)
Microscopic: spores 6.5-9 x 3.5-5.5 microns, elliptic, rather elongate, often slightly almond-shaped, minutely but distinctly roughened by punctations, inamyloid, faintly yellowish; basidia (2-)4-spored, 12-19 x 4.5-6 microns, "short-clavate, plump"; marginal hairs "(close to marginal basidia) in clumps, with swollen bases and long drawn-out thinner portions which may be branched", tips obtuse [blunt]; hyphae 2.5-4 microns wide, colorless, "not encrusted, thin-walled, rather loosely interwoven towards outside", without clamp connections, (Donk), spore size from Cooke difficult to determine by Cooke''s description because in body of description he gives 8.5-9.5 x 3.5-4 microns, but in the key just above it 6.5-7 x 3-5 microns; in any case they are teardrop-shaped to cylindric flattened on one side, apiculate, at first colorless, becoming light yellow-brown; hymenium formed of clavate basidia 15-20 x 4-7 microns, produced in easily separated fascicles (bundles), 4-spored, subhymenial hyphae up to 3 microns wide, clamped in some specimens; receptacle surface covered with smooth, thin-walled, colorless, simple-septate, subiculum-like hyphae 3-6 microns wide, forming a loose hyphal network; context of loosely arranged colorless hyphae, subhypochnoid, 3-4 microns wide, simple septate, (Cooke), spores (5)6-8(9) x (3.2)3.5-4.5(5) microns, varying from elliptic to almond-shaped, at first smooth and colorless, becoming pale brown and finally brown and roughened; basidia 2-4-spored, 13-20 x 6-8 microns, "more or less clavate, but particularly short and squat"; hairs up to 117 microns long and 2-4 microns wide, tapering gradually to obtuse apex 1.5-2.2 microns wide, thin-walled, colorless, and without encrustation, "Whether one considers the hairs to be branched or whether one considers the branching to be part of the vegetative hyphae from which the hairs are formed, is a matter of personal opinion"; cystidia absent, (Reid), spores 6.5-9 x 3.5-5.5 microns, almond-shaped, finely warty-pitted, pale yellow-brown, (Buczacki)
Habitat / Range
"scattered or somewhat crowded, rarely a few imperfectly confluent", on rotten bark and wood, old woody stems and fallen branches, dead herbaceous stems, and also on rotten leaves of hardwoods, apparently year round, (Donk), Alnus (alder), Cytisus scoparius (broom), Populus, Pteridium aquilinum (bracken fern), Vicia gigantea (giant vetch), (Ginns), on leaf litter of hardwood trees and shrubs, occasionally on conifer needle litter, "also recorded on stems of broom, gorse, clematis, and stinging nettle", usually in small, scattered groups; fall, winter, spring, (Buczacki)
