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

Summary:
Features include 1) growth on hardwood or less often on conifer wood, 2) fruitbodies that are resupinate, or with a cap (especially on vertical surfaces, shelf-like or bent outward from the resupinate surface), and sometimes even with a stem, 3) the cap when present whitish, grayish, ocherish or grayish orange, tomentose-velvety, concentrically grooved, sometimes zoned, and often shingled, 4) the spore-bearing surface pale ochraceous to salmon, with conic to almost cylindric spines, the margin of resupinate parts scalloped, velvety, and whitish, without rhizomorphs, 5) spores that are small, elliptic, smooth, inamyloid, and colorless, 6) cystidia that are cylindric, projecting, thick-walled, and encrusted, originating in the trama, and 7) a dimitic hyphal system, the generative hyphae with clamp connections.

Steccherinum ochraceum has been found in BC, WA, OR, ID, MB, NS, ON, PQ, AK, AL, AR, AZ, CA, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, KY, LA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WI, and WV, (Ginns), Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, (Eriksson), and Switzerland and Asia, (Breitenbach). Apart from Africa it has a very wide distribution on either side of the equator, (Maas Geesteranus).

Fruiting body:
effused, "usually small to medium sized, resupinate or with revolute margin" (not distinctly capped or seriate), reflexed part 0.5-1.5cm with the upper side smooth or somewhat zoned, velvety; spore-bearing surface odontioid, pale ochraceous to salmon, aculei [spines] more or less conic to almost cylindric, usually simple, rarely branched, in younger fruitbodies scattered and about 3-5 per millimeter, in more developed ones slightly crowded, about 0.05-0.1cm long, young spines fimbriate [fringed] at tip; "margin usually distinct, felted, whitish to pale ochraceous", 0.05-0.1cm wide; "rhizomorphs normally not present"; subiculum tough, whitish, in dried specimens 0.02-0.05cm thick, (Eriksson), |resupinate to semipileate, forming patches 0.05-0.2cm thick and several centimeters to decimeters across, consistency leathery-tough; projecting edges of caps (where present) with upper surface ocherish to grayish orange, tomentose-velvety, undulating, at times somewhat zoned, often imbricate [shingled]; spore-bearing surface finely odontioid: teeth 0.1-0.25cm long, subulate [awl-shaped], orange to salmon; marginal zone of resupinate part distinctly bounded, with "growth zones white and somewhat fringed", (Breitenbach), |extremely variable, effused, effused-reflexed, or capped, "single, gregarious, or confluent and forming extensive patches" or becoming imbricate [shingled]; in capped forms sessile, attached at vertex, substipitate to stipitate [with a stem], cap when present up to about 2cm radius and wide, "or much wider by lateral confluence", flange-like, dimidiate [roughly semicircular], conchate [shell-shaped] to flabelliform [fan-shaped] with constricted base, "horizontal or pendent, occasionally erect", more or less convex (but infundibuliform [funnel-shaped] in erect specimens), repeatedly concentrically grooved, velvety, tomentose, or woolly-hirsute, matting down in concentric areas or even becoming bald, not infrequently more or less radiately rugulose [wrinkled], variously colored, whitish cream, pale ochraceous, pale gray, often somewhat darker toward margin, occasionally also in the grooves; margin of reflexed part and of cap strongly incurved when dried; stem in some cases remarkably developed, up to 0.8cm long and 0.2cm wide, clothed and colored like cap; spore-bearing surface "subtomentose to minutely porous, flesh color with or without yellowish shade, rarely whitish", spines 0.05-0.3cm long, 0.01-0.03cm wide or wider when confluent, crowded, subulate [awl-shaped], terete [round in cross-section] or flattened, sometimes irpicoid, straight to flexuous [wavy], simple, furcate [forked], or confluent, pulverulent [powdery], flesh color, "with yellowish shade when young, more brownish when old", tip smooth or finely pubescent [downy] to hirsute [hairy], concolorous or whitish; undersurface of effused part pale ochraceous or pale flesh color to whitish; margin of effused part delicately scalloped, evenly velvety, whitish; context 0.05-0.15cm thick, "uniform or duplex, lower part leathery to tough, whitish to pallid, upper part tomentose, soft, concolorous to yellowish, both parts sometimes separated by dark brown line", (Maas Geesteranus), |spore deposit white (Buczacki)

Microscopic:
SPORES 3.2-3.5(4) x (2)2.2-2.5 microns, elliptic, smooth, thin-walled; BASIDIA 4-spored, 15-20 x 5 microns, subclavate, with basal clamp connection; CYSTIDIA (pseudocystidia) numerous, especially in the spines, but occurring frequently in the hymenial layer between the spines, "strongly encrusted in the widened upper part, generally more than 100 microns long" and in the encrusted part 7-10(12) microns wide, blunt, projecting 20-30 microns; HYPHAE dimitic, true generative hyphae 2.5-3.5 microns wide, more or less branched, thin-walled, with clamp connections, in the spine trama parallel together with skeletal hyphae and/or pseudocystidia, in the subiculum mixed with skeletal hyphae, which are 2-2.5 microns wide, thick-walled, without septa, "and bound together by richly branched, clamped generative hyphae with thickened walls", (Eriksson), |SPORES 3.5-4 x 2-2.5 microns, oval, smooth, inamyloid, colorless, some with one droplet; BASIDIA 4-spored, 15-27 x 3.5-4 microns, narrowly clavate, with basal clamp connection; CYSTIDIA (skeletocystidia) 5-10 microns wide, greater than 100 microns long, usually abundant and projecting beyond the hymenium, +/- cylindric, "thick-walled, incrusted"; HYPHAE dimitic, generative hyphae 2-3 microns wide, thin-walled, with clamp connections, skeletal hyphae 3-7 microns wide, thick-walled, (Breitenbach), |SPORES (3.1)3.4-4.5(4.7) x (1.6)1.8-2.5(2.7) microns, elliptic, adaxially flattened, smooth, colorless, with small oblique apiculus; BASIDIA 4-spored, 11-15 x 3.6-5.5 microns, clavate, with basal clamp connection, sterigmata 2.7-3.5 microns long; CYSTIDIA 4-10 microns wide, "of tramal origin, abundant to scarce, evenly distributed over spine", somewhat projecting, encrusted, cylindric to somewhat fusiform in distal part, with obtuse apex, (Maas Geesteranus), |spore print white (Lincoff(2))