Summary:
Features include small shallow cup with dark brown to black upper surface, thick flesh that yields no juice, absent stem, growth on burnt ground or in mushroom beds where soil has been sterilized, and microscopic characters including spores with a network of ridges, and flesh composed throughout of large rounded cells. The anamorph, Chromelosporium fulvum (Link), Hennebert and Korf, is velvety to floccose, white or yellow, turning to cinnamon when it is actively growing and producing conidia.
P. ostracoderma is found at least in WA, OR, (Larsen), Denmark, Norway, Sweden, (Hansen), and the United Kingdom (Dennis). A collection from BC is deposited at Pacific Forestry Centre, determined by J. Dennis.
Upper surface:
1-2cm across, "shallow cup-shaped becoming flattened"; disc dark brown to blackish, (Dennis), 0.8-1.6cm across, turbinate [top-shaped] to disc-shaped; spore bearing upper surface dark brownish, (Hansen)
Flesh:
relatively thick, but yielding no juice, (Dennis)
Stem:
without stem (Dennis)
Microscopic:
spores 13-14 x 7.5-8 microns, elliptic, with a more or less continuous network of prominent ridges; asci 260 x 11 microns; paraphyses cylindric, 3 microns wide; flesh composed throughout of large rounded cells, (Dennis), spores 12-15 x 7-10 microns, elliptic, irregularly reticulate, with 2 droplets, (Hansen)
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