FAGACEAE. Nothofagus truncata: Auckland, Kauaeranga Valley, Thames, 120 m. MYRTACEAE. Leptospermum ericoides: Auckland, Parahaki, Whangarei, 120 m. Metrosideros robusta: Auckland, Mt. Te Aroha, 700 m, type collection, P.D.D. herbarium, No. 5322.

Hymenophore annual, adherent, soft and fleshy, drying horny, then ceraceous, effused forming irregular linear areas 6-25 x 3-10 cm, 1-2 mm thick. Hymenial surface snow white when fresh, cream where bruised, staining in patches, drying pallid cream or wood colour, even, glancing, not creviced; margin 1-2 mm wide, white drying wood colour, irregular, fibrillose, lifting and incurved when dry. Pores not in strata, round or angular, 7-9 per mm, 50-100 µm most 50-60 µm diameter, to 1.5 mm deep; dissepiments 25-75 µm thick, commonly about 50 µm, equal, with apices slightly tapering, appearing slightly velutinate. Context white or cream, 0.2-0.5 mm thick, of intertwined hyphae more densely compacted near the substratum; skeletal hyphae 4-8 µm diameter, walls 1-3 µm thick, aseptate, sparsely branched; generative hyphae 2-2.5 µm diameter, walls 0.2 µm thick, branched, septate, with clamp connections. Metuloids cylindrical, 50-150 x 6-10 µm, encrusted with fine crystals, developing both in- the context and dissepiments. Hymenial layer to 15 µm deep, a dense palisade of basidia, paraphyses, and metuloids embedded in mucilage. Basidia subclavate or cylindrical, 8-10 x 3-4 µm, bearing 4 spores; sterigmata erect, delicate, to 3 µm long. Paraphyses cylindrical or obovate, 6-9 x 3-3.5 µm. Spores elliptical, 2.5-3.5 x 1.5-2 µm, walls smooth, hyaline, 0.1 µm thick.

New Zealand.

 

When fresh, plants are soft and snow white; when dry they become hard and horny and the colour changes to isabelline or wood brown. Specific features are the minute pores, thin dissepiments, presence of slightly inflated metuloids? with crystal-encrusted apices, and minute elliptical spores, sometimes flattened on one side. Metuloids resemble those of C. euporus, but are more delicately encrusted. They are formed from terminal ends of skeletal hyphae. The basidial type is honeycombed so that the species is related to C. radulus. Clamp connections, present in this species, are absent from the generative hyphae of C. euporus and C. radulus.

LOCALITY: Mt. Te Aroha, Auckland.