Leucogyrophana romellii

Appearance

Summary:
Features include 1) thin growth spread out on wood, 2) a yellowish, smooth to folded spore-bearing surface, the margin whitish, sometimes with hyphal strands, the context cottony or granulose, 3) broadly elliptic spores that are smooth, dextrinoid, pale yellow, and cyanophilic, with thickened walls, 4) context hyphae with clamp connections and encrusted with scattered cross-shaped or dentate crystals.

Collections were examined from BC, ID, NS, ON, PE, PQ, ME, MT, NC, NH, NM, NY, SD, VT, WI, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia, (Ginns(15)), It has also been recorded from AZ and MI, (Ginns(5)), and MB, YT, and AK, (Thorn(6)).
Fruiting body:
(2)5-10(25) x 1-5(10)cm, and up to 0.04cm thick, effused; "smooth (especially toward the margin) with scattered to rather common, low, randomly branched ridges, of various bright yellow to brown hues", particularly pale yellow, ochraceous to ochraceous-brown or ochraceous-pink and orange-yellow, "dry, fragile, thin, crustose, rarely shiny and somewhat waxy, sometimes fissured when dry"; margin 0.1-0.4(1)cm wide, thin, appressed, cottony becoming granulose next to the spore-bearing surface, "pallid to white, rarely with a slightly olive tint next to the substrate", some with hyphal strands; context thin (about 0.02cm thick), "cottony or occasionally granulose", "white to pallid, rarely with an olive tint next to the substrate"; spore deposit buff, (Ginns(15))
Microscopic:
SPORES 4.4-6.0 x 3.2-4.4 microns, broadly elliptic to broadly oval, adaxially somewhat flattened, smooth, dextrinoid or occasionally only weakly so, pale yellow, cyanophilic, wall thickened, apiculus relatively broad and blunt; BASIDIA 4-spored, (17)20-28 x 5-7(8) microns, narrowly clavate, sterigmata 4.5 microns long; cystidia lacking, CYSTIDIOLES not notable, occasionally with elongated, branched apices; TRAMAL HYPHAE "somewhat woven, not gelatinized"; CONTEXT HYPHAE 2.5-5(6.5) microns wide, distinct, "loosely woven, flexuous", colorless, thin-walled, with clamp connections, often branched at a clamp connection, "incrusted with distinctive but scattered, stauroid to dentate crystals", up to 6 microns in diameter; HYPHAL STRANDS scattered to rare, 15(60) microns wide, composed of one or a few broad (up to 9 microns wide) core hyphae that are surrounded by a number of narrower (up to 3.5 microns wide) hyphae, (Ginns(15))

Naming

Lasiobolus ciliatus

Distribution

BC, ID, NS, ON, PE, PQ, ME, MT, NC, NH, NM, NY, SD, VT, WI, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia, (Ginns(15)), It has also been recorded from AZ and MI, (Ginns(5)), and MB, YT, and AK, (Thorn(6)).

Habitat

associated with a brown rot of the wood of Abies (fir), Picea (spruce), Pinus (pine), Pseudotsuga (Douglas-fir), Tsuga (hemlock), one specimen on Betula (birch), (Ginns(15)), rarely also on live mosses (Ginns(5))