Ramaria stuntzii

Appearance

Fruiting body:
4-14cm wide and 6-17cm high, cauliflower-like when young, elongating greatly with age, (Scates-Barnhart), young fruitbodies with numerous compact branch systems form a cauliflower-like mass on the base, mature fruitbodies branching up to 9 times from the stem, internodes variously elongated up to 5cm, polychotomous to mostly dichotomous in most elongated fruitbodies, axils often turbinate and nodes slightly flattened, branches slightly to moderately divergent, primary branches of large diameter, up to 4cm, increasingly slender upwards, mostly 0.2-1.5cm diameter, bifid to multifid near tips, tips mostly rounded or nodulose, (Marr), 4-14cm wide, 6-17cm tall, "a cauliflower-like mass of compact branches arising from a very massive base", (Bessette)
Flesh:
softly stringy, colored like surface or paler, (Scates-Barnhart), punky-fibrous when fresh, (Marr), grayish red to grayish orange and brittle in branches; yellowish white and fibrous in stem, (Bessette)
Branch color:
branches and tips scarlet when young, soon fading to orangish shades, (Scates-Barnhart), scarlet fading to light orange-red when old, light orange at substrate level, apices scarlet, (Exeter(1)), scarlet when young, fading to pale orange-red when mature, (Castellano), "scarlet, fading to pale orange-red, darkest at the tips", (Bessette)
Stem:
2-7cm x 2.5-7cm, single, cylindric to conic, very massive, bearing small abortive or primordial white branches; underground part of fresh fruitbody white, (Marr), equal or narrowing downward (Scates-Barnhart), white to pale orange near base, (Castellano), 2-7cm x 2.5-7cm, solid, cylindric, very massive; white on lower part, pale orange on the upper part, "developing furrows as branches begin to emerge", (Bessette)

Distribution

endemic to the Pacific Northwest