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.

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))

Notes:
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).

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Radulum casearium Aucts.