Red Brain Fungus

Appearance

Fruiting Body: Resupinate; usually growing in patches of cushion-shaped individual fruiting bodies measuring up to about 1 cm across and 2 mm high; surface waxy, wrinkled, red to orange-red when fresh (sometimes with a whitish dusting), becoming purplish with age.

Flesh: Hard; whitish to grayish.

Spore Print: White.

Microscopic Features: Spores 6-9 x 2-3 µ; smooth; cylindrical to sausage-shaped; inamyloid. Basidia 4-sterigmate. Gloeocystidia pear-shaped to clavate; 10-25 µ across. Cystidia cylindric to fusiform; scarcely projecting; 5-8 µ wide; with encrusted apices. Hyphal system monomitic. Clamp connections present.

Naming

Peniophora rufa (Fr.) Boidin, Bulletin de la Société Mycologique de France 74 (4): 443 (1959)
Thelephora rufa Fr., Elenchus Fungorum 1: 187 (1828)
Xerocarpus rufus (Fr.) P. Karst., Bidrag till Kännedom av Finlands Natur och Folk 37: 135 (1882)
Sterellum rufum (Fr.) J. Erikss., Symbolae Botanicae Upsalienses 16 (1): 120 (1958)
Tubercularia pezizoidea Schwein., Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 4 (2): 301 (1832)
Hypocrea richardsonii Vestergr., Micr. rar. sel. 404 (1867)

Distribution

http://mycoportal.org/portal/map/googlemap.php?maptype=taxa&taxon=357010&clid=81

Habitat

Saprobic and apparently sometimes pathogenic on the wood of aspens (quaking aspen and big-toothed aspen), and occasionally on the wood of other hardwoods; erupting through the still-attached bark; spring, summer, and fall; fairly widely distributed where the host trees are present (northern and montane North America).