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Species Information
Summary: {See also Red Ramaria Table.} Ramaria stuntzii has a medium-sized fruitbody that is robust. When young it is scarlet and cauliflower-like with a white base, elongating and fading to more orange as it gets older. It has a strong amyloid reaction in the stem flesh.
Collections were examined from WA and CA, (Marr). It is also found in OR (Castellano). Distribution is the Pacific Northwest from BC south to CA: it is uncommon, (Bessette).
Fruiting body: 4-14cm wide and 6-17cm high, cauliflower-like when young, elongating greatly with age, (Scates-Barnhart), young fruitbodies with numerous compact branch systems form a cauliflower-like mass on the base, mature fruitbodies branching up to 9 times from the stem, internodes variously elongated up to 5cm, polychotomous to mostly dichotomous in most elongated fruitbodies, axils often turbinate and nodes slightly flattened, branches slightly to moderately divergent, primary branches of large diameter, up to 4cm, increasingly slender upwards, mostly 0.2-1.5cm diameter, bifid to multifid near tips, tips mostly rounded or nodulose, (Marr), 4-14cm wide, 6-17cm tall, "a cauliflower-like mass of compact branches arising from a very massive base", (Bessette)
Flesh: softly stringy, colored like surface or paler, (Scates-Barnhart), punky-fibrous when fresh, (Marr), grayish red to grayish orange and brittle in branches; yellowish white and fibrous in stem, (Bessette)
Branch color: branches and tips scarlet when young, soon fading to orangish shades, (Scates-Barnhart), scarlet fading to light orange-red when old, light orange at substrate level, apices scarlet, (Exeter(1)), scarlet when young, fading to pale orange-red when mature, (Castellano), "scarlet, fading to pale orange-red, darkest at the tips", (Bessette)
Stem: 2-7cm x 2.5-7cm, single, cylindric to conic, very massive, bearing small abortive or primordial white branches; underground part of fresh fruitbody white, (Marr), equal or narrowing downward (Scates-Barnhart), white to pale orange near base, (Castellano), 2-7cm x 2.5-7cm, solid, cylindric, very massive; white on lower part, pale orange on the upper part, "developing furrows as branches begin to emerge", (Bessette)
Chemical Reactions: stem flesh strongly and rapidly amyloid when a drop of Melzer''s reagent is applied to a freshly cut surface; a green reaction occurs on the hymenial surface when a drop of 10% aqueous FeSO4 is applied, (Bessette), ferric sulphate in water negative with stem flesh, (Exeter)
Odor: not distinctive (Marr)
Taste: slightly bitter (Marr)
Microscopic: spores 7-10 x 3-5 microns, average 8.3 x 4 microns, verrucose, basidia with cyanophilic and granular inclusions; clamp connections absent, (Exeter(1)), spores "with small lobed warts", illustrated with fine angled lines that are mostly short; basidia 1-4-spored (mostly 4-spored), 45-75 x 7-10(12) microns, clavate, clampless, inclusions cyanophilic and granular, (Marr), basidia without clamp connections (Exeter(3))
Spore Deposit: apricot yellow'' (Marr, color from Kornerup(2))
Habitat / Range
on ground in old coniferous forest, usually Tsuga heterophylla (Western Hemlock), occasionally in fairy rings, fall, (Scates-Barnhart), on ground under Western Hemlock, usually produces a large number of fruitbodies in a fairy ring, (Marr)
Similar Species
Ramaria araiospora and Ramaria cyaneigranosa are a different color of red and are less robust in habit - the stem flesh is inamyloid, (Marr). Note that some collections of R. araiospora var. araiospora are amyloid, (Scates-Barnhart). See also SIMILAR section of Ramaria cyaneigranosa var. cyaneigranosa.
