Summary:
Ramaria botrytoides has 1) whitish branches with red or pink tips, 2) base developing beneath soil level, producing branches at or very near the ground level, 3) spores with longitudinal rows of low obscure cyanophilic warts, 4) rare clamp connections, and 5) rare to occasionally oleaginous hyphae in the stem context. Petersen(24) (1967) says of Ramaria conjuncta (Peck) Corner (described in Corner(2)), "There can be little doubt that this is the same as C. botrytoides Pk."

Chemical Reactions:
stem flesh non-amyloid; ferric sulphate in water negative with stem flesh, (Exeter)

Odor:
similar to taste (Corner)

Taste:
like green pea-hulls (Corner), exceedingly acrid [peppery] taste can linger in mouth for up to 12 hours, (but in his key taste said to be bitter to very bitter), (Arora)

Microscopic:
spores 8.4-10.1 x 3.6-4.6 microns, short-cylindric to subovate, cyanophilic ornamentation of longitudinal rows of low obscure warts, spores pale yellow in mass, with obscure dark vacuolar structures under phase contrast, (spores pale brownish in Melzer''s reagent), slightly thick-walled, apiculus indistinct and lateral; basidia 4-spored, 42-52 microns long, clavate, simple-septate, homogeneous in content, sterigmata up to 6 microns long, slender, slightly incurved; basidioles simple-septate; hymenium thickening through hyphal branching from or in juxtaposition to the basidial septum; stem context hyphae of 3 types: 1) "very rare thin-walled, oleaginous, uninflated hyphae", 2.4-5 microns wide, 2) somewhat tortuous, colorless, thin-walled, sometimes clamped hyphae, homogeneous in content, 2.1-2.5 microns wide, and 3) rather straight, thin-walled, colorless, simple-septate hyphae 4.0-6.5 microns wide, "with numerous small dark smudges visible under phase contrast, and with pronounced, somewhat thick-walled, minutely punctate swellings up to 15 microns diam, distal to septa", all context hyphae "subparallel with some interweaving, but arranged in no regular tissues"; branch context hyphae 4.0-6.5 microns wide, thin-walled, colorless, simple-septate, interweaving, swollen to about 10 microns distal to septa; stem "covered with effete hymenial cells the more turgid of which are refractile, but mostly sterile", (Petersen)

Notes:
Ramaria botrytoides is common throughout the US according to Corner, widespread but not particularly common and occurring in California according to Arora, not included in Marr and Stuntz: Ramaria in Western Washington (Marr(1)), but collected from OR with confirmation by R.H. Petersen (R. Exeter, pers. comm.). There is a collection by O Ceska from BC at the University of British Columbia.

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Corticium sublaeve Bres.
Peniophora sublaevis (Bres.) Hoehn. & Litsch.