On bark of trees. Dunedin (315), Waitaki (342).

Pileo coriaceo, rigido, effuso-reflexo, cinereo, subzonato, hirsuto ; hymenio nudo, glabro, radiato-rimoso laceratore, cinereo, demum pruinoso.

Effused for three or four inches, with the margin torn and split, separable, slightly reflexed above and villons. Entirely cinereous.

UNKNOWN HOST. Victoria, Korumburra (Type collection of S. pannosum, in herb. Kew).

Hymenophore annual, membranous, fragile, pileate. Pilei flabelliform, conchate or occasionally effused-reflexed, 2-4 cm radius, 3-5 cm wide; pileus surface snuff brown or coffee-coloured, fibrillose with adpressed hairs, radially sulcate, concolorous or sometimes with bands of light and dark hairs; margin acute, inturned or plane, lobed; hymenial surface at first white, drying clay or wood colour; even, not creviced. Context brown, 0.6-1.2 mm thick, of loosely intertwined hyphae; cortex absent, abhymenial hairs arising directly from the context; generative hyphae 3-5 µm diameter, walls 0.5 µm thick, yellow-brown, clamp connections conspicuous. Gloeocystidia arising from the subhymenium, some projecting to 15 µm, fusiform, 62-95 x 5.5-9 µm, with oily contents. Hymenial layer to 40 µm deep, a loose palisade of basidia, paraphyses, and gloeocystidia. Basidia subclavate, 16-22 x 4-4.5 µm, bearing 4 spores; sterigmata erect, slender, to 4 µm long. Paraphyses subclavate, 12-18 x 3.5-4 µm. Spores elliptical or elliptic-obovate, 3.5-5 x 2.5-3 µm, walls smooth, hyaline, 0.1 µm thick.

DISTRIBUTION: Europe, Great Britain, North America, South Africa, Malaya, Australia.

HABITAT: Bark or decorticated wood of decayed branches.

Stereum bicolor is represented in this region by two collections (labelled type) of S. pannosum Cke: & Mass. ex "Victoria, Korumburra, Mrs Martin, Nos. 1067,1071" which match European specimens examined in Kew herbarium. The species may be identified by the coffee-coloured pileus surface and white or cream hymenial surface, loosely intertwined hyphae of the context with brown walls and conspicuous clamp connections, monomitic hyphal system, prominent gloeocystidia, and absence of a cortex. In the possession of a monomitic hyphal system and gloeocystidia it resembles S. aotearoa. Because of the arrangement of context hyphae the species is not a typical Stereum, and was accordingly made the type of Laxitextum by Lentz (1955, p. 18).

TYPE LOCALITY: Europe.

[Notes from Kew Type specimen, PRJ 2010] Kew images.