FAGACEAE. Nothofagus menziesii: Otago, Alton Valley, Tuatapere, 100 m.

Hymenophore resupinate, perennial, stratose, membranous, adherent, effused forming irregular areas 2-4 cm across; hymenial surface cinnamon, even, delicately velutinate, not creviced; margin thinning out, concolorous, fibrillose, adherent. Context cinnamon, 1-3 mm thick, stratose, of numerous setal layers (3-15) with layers of loosely intertwined hyphae between and a broad tissue of intertwined hyphae at the base; generative hyphae 4-5 µm diameter, walls 0.5-1 µm thick, pallid yellow. Setal layers to 95 µm deep, with somewhat scattered setae overlapping into each context layer; setae acicular, some projecting to 50 µm, 60-90 x 5-7 µm, walls naked, golden brown near the surface, darker in the context, lumena narrow. Hymenial layer to 35 µm deep, a close palisade of scanty basidia, abundant paraphyses, and paraphysate hyphae. Basidia subclavate, 16-20 x 4-5 µm, bearing 4 spores; sterigmata arcuate, slender, to 4 µm long. Paraphyses cylindrical, tinted, 8-14 x 4-4.5 µm. Paraphysate hyphae to 4 µm diameter, most branched, hyaline or tinted yellow. Spores suballantoid, 5-6 x 3-3.5 µm, walls smooth, hyaline, 0.1 µm thick.

>DISTRIBUTION: Europe, North America, New Zealand.

HABITAT: Bark or decorticated wood of dead branches associated with a pocket rot.

Plants bear more setal layers than authentic European specimens examined in Kew herbarium, but agree in other features, such as the cinnamon surface colour, context hyphae branched at a wide angle, stratose context, small suballantoid spores, and absence of a cortex. Paraphysate hyphae may be abundant or scanty, but are always present, in some plants being so freely developed as to give the surface a tomentose appearance.
H. cinnamomea, H. arida, and H. rhabarbarina are related species; for all are without a cortex, possess a monomitic hyphal system, a context composed of similar intertwined hyphae, and similar spores. In such stratose species as H. cinnamomea, H. lignosa, H. tasmanica, and H. vaginata strata are demarked by layers of persistent paraphyses which usually stain with aniline blue. They show that each layer represents a growth period, and afford a useful feature by which stratose species may be separated from those bearing many rows of overlapping setae, such as H. fusca or H. magnahypha.

TYPE LOCALITY: Europe.