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

Summary:
Features include 1) resupinate growth on wood (or may bend out to form a cap), 2) a cap that when present is brown-black, zoned, and tomentose, and slopes downward at an acute angle rather than at right angle, 3) a spore-bearing surface that is grayish, yellowish, brownish, brownish orange, or bluish to lilac and smooth to tuberculate or wrinkled, often with a whitish bloom, 4) a black reaction of the spore-bearing surface to KOH, 5) spores that are narrowly elliptic to subcylindric, smooth, inamyloid, and colorless or yellowish, 6) cystidia of 2 types: a) projecting, cylindric to narrowly clavate, thin-walled to thick-walled, smooth or finely encrusted, light-colored apically and yellowish to brownish toward the base (or pale at first but brown when old), b) enclosed, smaller, narrowly clavate to cylindric, brown, thick-walled and septate without clamp connections, smooth or lightly encrusted, and 7) a hyphal system referred to as monomitic or as dimitic, with 5 layers: a) tomentum, b) black cutis, c) subiculum, d) subhymenium, and e) hymenium, the subicular hyphae with clamp connections.

Veluticeps abietina has been found in BC, WA, OR, ID, AB, MB, NF, NS, NT, ON, PQ, YT, AK, AZ, CA, CO, MI, MT, NH, NY, PA, TN, UT, VT, WI, and WY, (Ginns, who notes that because Veluticeps fimbriata was separated later, some of the western North America records may correspond to that species instead); North Europe including Sweden (Eriksson); and MB, NF, NS, NT, ON, YT, AK, CO, MI, NH, NY, UT, Austria, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Croatia, USSR, (Nakasone).

Fruiting body:
resupinate or effuso-reflexed [bent outward to form a cap], forming patches several centimeters to decimeters across, 0.05-0.2cm thick, tightly attached, corky, tough; cap forms on vertical substrate and grows conspicuously obliquely downward (at an acute angle), upper cap surface brown to brown-black, zoned, and tomentose; spore-bearing area "gray-blue to gray-lilac when fresh, gray-brown to ocherish when dry", "tuberculate-undulating, smooth, dull, pruinose"; flesh multilayered; underside of fruiting body with brown felty tomentum, (Breitenbach), perennial, resupinate or with a cap, 0.1-0.2cm thick, first orbiculate [circular] then coalescing, "margin light brown, fibrillose"; cap surface dark brown, with more or less zonate tomentum, spore bearing area "dark violaceous blue when wet, paler when dry"; in section several layers can be seen under microscope or with a lens: 1) brown tomentum, 2) brown cutis (visible even when resupinate), 3) intermediate layer, 4) spore-bearing surface, (Eriksson), up to 0.2cm thick, orbicular [circular] at first, then confluent, up to 10cm x 5cm, resupinate, or effused-reflexed [bending outward to form a cap], may be imbricate [shingled], spongy-coriaceous [spongy-leathery], annual or perennial; cap when developed narrow, projecting 0.3-2cm, hard, brittle; dark brown to nearly black, grooved; exposed spore-bearing surface is pale yellow, yellowish-white to yellowish gray, brownish orange to grayish brown, or brownish gray, rarely dull violet, turning black in KOH; smooth to tuberculate or rugose [wrinkled], felty, velvety, often cracked, often with a whitish bloom; sterile margin up to 0.25cm wide, entire to crenate [scalloped], loosely attached and often pulling away, grayish orange to brown, without a bloom; flesh brown, sometimes with alternating dark and light layers, (Nakasone)

Microscopic:
SPORES 9-12.5 x (3.5)4-4.5 microns, elliptic, smooth, inamyloid, colorless; BASIDIA 4-spored, 50-75 x 6-8 microns, cylindric-clavate, with basal clamp connection; CYSTIDIA of two types: 1) projecting beyond the hymenium, up to nearly 200 microns long and 6-12 microns wide, arising from deeper tissues, "thick-walled, finely incrusted, light-colored apically and brownish toward the base", 2) enclosed by the hymenium 40-100 x 3.5-9 microns, brown, thick-walled and septate without clamp connections; HYPHAE dimitic: generative hyphae 1.5-3 microns wide, thin-walled to thick-walled, septa with clamp connections, skeletal hyphae 3-5 microns wide, very thick-walled, brown, (Breitenbach), |SPORES 9-13 x 4-5 microns, narrowly elliptic to subcylindric or even slightly allantoid [curved], smooth, inamyloid, colorless or yellowish, thin-walled, when old slightly thick-walled; BASIDIA 4-spored, 50-70 x 5-6 microns, narrowly clavate, thin-walled, walls becoming slightly thickened when old; CYSTIDIA of two types: projecting and enclosed, 1) the projecting cystidia 150-200 x 8-12 microns, "starting deep in intermediate layer", very thick-walled and generally only slightly pigmented (yellow to light brown), apically almost colorless, "externally with a generally thin and delicate crystalline crust, dissolving in Melzer''s reagent and in lactic acid", 2) enclosed cystidia 50-100 x 3-6 microns, "thickwalled and strongly pigmented, often with several simple adventitious septa", starting from the skeletal hyphae in the intermediate layer, this type of cystidia may also develop from thin-walled, slightly encrusted basidia-like cystidioles in the hymenium; HYPHAE dimitic: generative hyphae 2-3.5 microns wide, thin-walled, colorless, with clamp connections at septa from where branching occurs, skeletal hyphae 2.5-4(5) microns, thick-walled, dark brown, with very few simple septa, (Eriksson), |SPORES 10.7-13 x (4)4.3-4.8(5) microns, cylindric to narrowly elliptic (adaxial side often straight), smooth, inamyloid, colorless, slightly thick-walled; BASIDIA 4-spored, 60-90(108) x 5-7(8.5) microns, tapering to 2.5-3.5 microns at base, thin-walled, colorless, (occasionally slightly thick-walled and pale yellow toward base), with basal clamp connection; CYSTIDIA of two types: hymenial and tramal - 1) hymenial cystidia 90-300 x 7-12 microns, tapering to 2.5-4 microns at base, protruding up to 100 microns, arising from subiculum and hymenium, cylindric to narrowly clavate, thin-walled to slightly thick-walled at apex, thickening at mid-section (up to 3 microns), then thinner toward base, smooth or encrusted with a thin crystalline coating, colorless or pale yellow at first but brown when old, with basal clamp connection, 2) tramal cystidia: up to 160 microns long, 4-5.5(8) microns at widest, narrowing to 2-3 microns at base, "typically embedded in subiculum, subhymenium and lower hymenium but occasionally protruding slightly beyond the hymenium", narrowly clavate to cylindric, slight thick-walled to thick-walled throughout, "often with adventitious septa, sometimes constricted slightly, yellowish brown throughout, occasionally smooth but more often lightly encrusted with granular crystalline materials"; HYPHIDIA inconspicuous and scarce in hymenium, up to 70 microns long, 3-5 microns wide, thin-walled, with basal clamp connection, sometimes with adventitious septa, occasionally branched; HYPHAE monomitic - 5 distinct layers may be present: 1) abhymenial tomentum 70-400 microns thick, sometimes absent, of hyphae 3-4.5 microns wide, thick-walled, yellowish brown, with rare clamp connections and simple septa, sparsely branched, 2) black cutis 30-150 microns thick, of more or less parallel, horizontally arranged hyphae, 3) subiculum 150-450 microns thick, of horizontally arranged agglutinated hyphae, of two types (Nakasone) For additional details see MatchMaker