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.

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)

Notes:
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.

EDIBILITY

not edible (McKnight)

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Endogone lactiflua "sensu Fischer, Buchholz et auctt."