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

Summary:
Features include small, cup-shaped fruitbodies with a dark olive green upper surface, rusty brown powder on exterior, and growth on dead twigs and branches of deciduous trees and shrubs.

Velutarina rufo-olivacea is found from NJ to OR, and also in Europe, (Seaver), including Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, (Hansen), and the United Kingdom (Dennis). There are collections from BC deposited at the Pacific Forestry Centre.

Upper surface:
reaching 0.1-0.3cm across, erumpent [emerging from substrate] and soon becoming apparently superficial; spore-bearing upper surface concave or nearly flat, dark-colored, slightly olivaceous to black, (Seaver), erumpent, cup-shaped with an inrolled margin; disc up to 0.3cm across, olive-green or almost black, (Dennis), up to 0.3cm across, upper surface dark olive green, (Hansen)

Underside:
with dense coat of hairs giving a mealy appearance, (Seaver), covered with rusty brown or tan powder, (Dennis), with rusty brown powder (Hansen)

Stem:
subsessile (Dennis), without a stem (Hansen)

Microscopic:
spores 12-15 x 6-8 microns, elliptic, colorless or faintly colored, uniseriate; asci 8-spored, reaching a length of 110-120 microns and a width of 12-14 microns, subcylindric; paraphyses filiform [thread-like], rather strongly widened in upper part; hairs "poorly developed and more or less disjuncted", often each with a large spherical tip which gives the mealy appearance, (Seaver), spores 10-14 x 6-7 microns, elliptic with obtusely rounded ends, colorless at first becoming pale brown, containing 1 or 2 large oil droplets, uniseriate; asci 8-spored, up to 160 x 12 microns, cylindric-clavate, the broad pore turning blue with iodine; paraphyses 3 microns wide, widening to 5 microns wide at the greenish brown tip; external powder "formed of thick-walled, loose, irregularly lobed cells", (Dennis), spores 10-14 x 6-8 microns, asci 120-160 x 10-15 microns, with amyloid pore, (Hansen)