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

Summary:
Features of Ramaria suecica include 1) generally vertical spindle-shaped outline with a few erect major branches, 2) branches that are somewhat flattened, palmate, and pallid ocher to pink ocher, 3) branch tips white when young to pallid ocher when mature, 4) soft flesh, 5) stem up to 2cm long, but often branched from the base, arising from a small mycelial mat and ill-defined white rhizomorphic strands, 6) faintly spicy to fragrant odor, 7) mildly peppery to mildly bitter taste, 8) spores with cyanophilic ornamentation of coarse meandering ridges and scattered warts, 9) clamp connections, and 10) monomitic hyphae in rhizomorphs.

Collections were examined from WA, AK, Austria, United Kingdom (Scotland), USSR, Nepal, and New Zealand, (Corner(3)). Collections were examined from BC, ID, AB, AK, MN, NC, NH, NY, TN, Finland, Netherlands, and Switzerland. It has been found in OR, (Castellano). Distribution is from the Appalachian Mountains westward to Pacific Coastal areas from BC to northern CA, as well as northern Europe, (Petersen).

Fruiting body:
up to 7cm high, usually with a stem but often branched from the base, generally fusiform in outline, major branches "few, erect, slightly spreading, lobed in cross-section", branches somewhat flattened, palmate, axils "acute to narrowly rounded, sterile, often decurrent", internodes diminishing gradually but rapidly, tips somewhat stout, acute, hymenium amphigenous (usually) to unilateral, hardly detectable when fresh but sharply delimited when dry (sterile part darker than spore deposit), (Petersen)

Flesh:
in branches, soft when fresh, colored as surface, (Petersen)

Branch color:
major branches pallid ocher to pinkish ocher when fresh ("warm buff", "pinkish buff", or "seashell pink" when young, "cinnamon" when old), tips white when young to pallid ocher when mature ("pale pinkish cinnamon", "pale pinkish buff", when old "light pinkish buff"), (Petersen), orange-white to pallid ocher to pinkish ocher when fresh, cinnamon when old, sometimes with grayish orange to brick red bruises or stains on lower branches, tips white when young to pinkish cinnamon when mature, (Scates-Barnhart), pallid ocher to pink ocher when fresh, tips white when young to pale pink-tan when mature, (Castellano)

Stem:
usually more or less stipitate [with a stem] but often branched from the base, stem up to 2cm long, up to 0.8cm wide, (often so short as to be indistinct), lobed to round in cross-section, dull pallid ochraceous when young, deeper when old, hardly covered with basal mat, smooth in upper part; arising from a small mycelial mat and rhizomorphic strands, the rhizomorphic strands "white, ill-defined, very slender and fragile, often delicately webbed, not extensive", basal mat "not extensive, appressed to substrate surfaces, separable, cottony in substrate lacunae", (Petersen)

Chemical Reactions:
KOH on spore-bearing surface orange, weak brown or deep yellow, ferric sulphate on spore-bearing surface slowly deep slate green; rhizomorphs when dried turning pale lemon yellow in 2% KOH, (Petersen)

Odor:
faintly spicy to fragrant (Petersen)

Taste:
mildly acrid [peppery] to mildly bitter (Petersen)

Microscopic:
spores 8.1-10.4 x 3.7-5.2 microns, average 9.03 x 4.26 microns, "narrowly rhomboidal to cylindric, usually tapering asymmetrically toward the apiculus and often tapering asymmetrically abaxially, roughened in profile", "ornamentation of coarse, cyanophilous meandering ridges and scattered warts or papillate of coarse warts only", contents homogeneous to minutely sludgy, wall up to 0.4 microns thick, somewhat thinner distally, apiculus "gradual, large, broad, but not prominent"; basidia 4-spored, 45-70 x 7.6-8.7 microns, clavate, clamped, contents homogeneous; hyphae of rhizomorphic strands 1.5-3.7 microns wide, thin-walled, colorless, "conspicuously and copiously clamped, usually somewhat rigid and straight, but often easily collapsed, usually encrusted with crystalline material", inflated clamp connections "up to 15 microns broad, broadly ovoid to onion-shaped, somewhat thick-walled (wall up to 0.8 microns thick) especially over and in juxtaposition to septum, unornamented to very rarely and sparsely ornamented"; hyphae of upper branch trama 3.0-7.5 microns wide, "thin-walled, loosely interwoven to rather straight and then rather femur-shaped from large clamps", (Petersen)