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Species Information
Summary: Features include 1) funnel-shaped fruitbody with the upper part more horizontal, or in double rosettes, or with overlapping wedge-shaped lobes, 2) purplish brown to blackish brown or blackish purple color, 3) surface radially fibrillose to smooth, more or less zoned, with fringed margin irregularly torn or lobed, 4) spore-bearing surface underneath smooth or streaked, 5) stem absent or chestnut brown and usually central, 6) growth on soil in coniferous woods, and 7) elliptic angular-lobate spiny spores.
Distribution includes WA, ID, NB, ON, PQ, AK, CA, CO, CT, DC, GA, IA, KY, MA, ME, MI, MN, MT, NC, NH, NY, OH, PA, and VT, (Ginns). It has been reported from BC (in Redhead(5)). There are collections from BC at the Pacific Forestry Centre and the University of British Columbia.
Fruiting body: small to medium, thin rosettes of variable shape: caps 1-5cm wide, simple and shallowly vase-shaped, or compound, with several overlapping concentric discs or spatula-shaped lobes; upper surface purplish brown to blackish brown or blackish purple, fading with drying and becoming somewhat zoned, "smooth or with radiating fibrils (streaks) or irregularly roughened"; margin irregularly torn or lobed; undersurface smooth or streaked, (McKnight), 1.5-4cm high, with central stem, funnel-shaped, occasionally with lateral stem; cap 1-5cm wide, entire or more or less deeply lacerate into fan-shaped or spathulate, often imbricate [shingled] lobes, sometimes proliferating from the center and becoming imbricate or doubled; fuscous purple or purple brown, drying paler, more or less zoned; radially fibrillose or rugulose, or "merely inoderm", margin fimbriate [fringed]; spore-bearing surface inferior, decurrent, brownish or fuscous violaceous, paler to the margin, smooth, sometimes radially streaked, (Corner), up to 5cm across, often a double rosette shape, upper surface streaked, brownish radiating fibers, with smooth or lacerated margin, a bit zoned, lower surface zoned, light near margin, medium brown in the middle, purple brown near stem, slightly grooved, (Schalkwijk-Barendsen), 1.5-5cm across, 1.5-5cm high, fuscous purple but drying wood brown; undersurface grayish olive to light yellowish olive, (Burt)
Flesh: coriaceous [leathery], thin; brown, (Corner), thin; deep brown, (McKnight),
Stem: 0.4-1.7 x 0.2-0.5cm, central, occasionally lateral, occasionally almost lacking; chestnut brown, drying pallid; smooth, matte or subtomentose, (Corner), short to almost lacking, central or off-center; colored as cap, (McKnight), up to 3cm tall, (but sometimes absent), equal, cylindric, central; chestnut brown; a bit hairy and crusty, (Schalkwijk-Barendsen), 1cm long, 0.2-0.3cm wide, (Burt)
Odor: none (Corner)
Taste: not distinctive (McKnight)
Microscopic: spores 6.5-8.5 x 5-7 microns, elliptic, angular, more or less lobate, echinulate [finely spiny] with spines up to 1 micron long, less often up to 1.5 microns long, rarely as blunt warts, umber purple, one to several droplets; basidia 2-4-spored, 47-65 x 8-10 microns or 70-90 x 9-12 microns, sterigmata 7-8.5 microns long; cystidia none; hyphae 3-6.5(8) microns wide, with clamp connections, secondarily septate, developing firm, slightly thickened brown walls, hymenium generally cyanescent in KOH, the trama not, (Corner), spores 6.5-8.5 x 5-7 microns, angular-elliptic or lobed, with long spines, (McKnight)
Spore Deposit: yellowish brown (Schalkwijk-Barendsen), purple-brown (Buczacki)
Habitat / Range
on sandy ground in coniferous woods, (Corner), single or in groups on soil in coniferous woods, summer and fall, (McKnight)
Similar Species
Thelephora regularis is paler in color, the cap is not characteristically fibrillose, and the stem is tomentose, (Corner). Similarly shaped forms of Thelephora terrestris are thicker and more coarse (McKnight).
