On dead wood of (1) Beilschmiedia tawa Waiotapu, 17 June 1950, J. M. Dingley; (2) B. tawa, Thames, Kauaeranga Valley, 22 Oct. 1950, J. M. Dingley; (3) Cordyline australis. Hamilton, Claudelands Reserve, Nov. 1946, G. H. Cunningham (Poria cordylina HOLOTYPE, PDD. 5248).

Fructifications coriaceous, warm greyish when fresh, turning brown where bruised, drying smoky brown or fuscous, to 15 x 10 cm, 5-16 mm thick. Pores non-stratose, often obliquely inserted and incomplete, to 15 mm deep, irregularly angular or polygonal, (l)-2-4 per mm, dingy white when fresh, drying wood colour. Dissepiments thin equal, fimbriate. Context and trama composed of interwoven, thick-walled hyphae, solid or with narrow lumina, sparingly branched, strongly crystal incrusted, rarely septate, l.5-3.5 µm. diam., clamp connections absent. Thin-walled hyphae branched, septate, 1.5-2.5 µm diam., clamp connections present. Hymenium lining pores; probasidia obovate to pyriform, with basal clamp connections, 7.5-9-8 x 5.5-7 µm, becoming longitudinally cruciate-septate; sterigmata 5-10 µm. long. Basidiospores curved-cylindrical to allantoid, hyaline, smooth, apiculate, 5-7 x 2.2-3µm. Germination not observed.

Angiosperm and gymnosperm wood.

ILLUSTRATIONS. Teixeira & Rogers, Mycologia 47: 411, f. 1-7. 1955; Macrae, Mycologia 47: 813, f. 1. 814, f. 2-18. 1955.

New Zealand collections of Aporpium caryae are considerably darker in colour and more resinous in texture than specimens from other countries, as noted by Teixeira & Rogers. Microscopically they are indistinguishable. Teixeira & Rogers described the occasional occurrence of thin-walled cystidioles in the hymenium but Macrae (1955, p. 815) stated that cystidia were absent. No cystidia-like structures were observed in the above collections.
Macroscopically, A. caryae resembles a Poria and could easily be mistaken for a member of that genus were it not for the cruciate-septate basidia.

TYPE LOCALITY:
Pennsylvania, U.S.A.