CONIFERAE. Pinus radiata: Wellington, Ngaumu State Forest, Wairarapa.

Hymenophore annual, ceraceous, drying horny, somewhat loosely attached and tending to peel from the substratum when dry, effused forming irregular areas 2-12 cm across; hymenial surface pallid ochre or pallid flesh colour, even or irregularly rugulose, not creviced; margin thinning out, fibrillose, white or cream, loosely attached. Context white, drying isabelline, 200-500 µm thick, basal layer well developed, of mainly parallel compacted hyphae with walls tinted in a few next the substratum, intermediate layer of mainly erect hyphae densely arranged; generative hyphae 4-7 µm diameter, walls 0.25-1 µm thick, hyaline, with rare clamp connections, sometimes wanting. Metuloids arising in the hymenial layer when some project to 35 µm and scattered among hyphae of the intermediate layer and subhymenium, conical, subfusiform, or cylindrical with acuminate apices, 55-84 x 8-16 µm, encrusted wholly or upon apices only, crystals deciduous, walls to 5 µm thick in submerged metuloids. Hymenial layer to 40 µm deep, a dense palisade of basidia, paraphyses, and metuloids. Basidia clavate, 14-22 x 4.5-6 µm, bearing 4 spores; sterigmata erect, slender, to 6 µm long. Paraphyses subclavate, 12-18 x 4-5 µm. Spores elliptical or obovate, some with oblique apiculi, 5-6.5 x 2.5-3 µm, walls smooth, hyaline, 0.1 µm thick.

DISTRIBUTION: Europe, Great Britain, North America, New Zealand.

HABITAT: Effused on bark or decorticated wood of dead branches and trunks.

But one collection has as yet been found in the region, and agrees with European specimens examined, differing only in the smaller size of fructifications, these being roughly orbicular and 2.5 cm across. The species may be recognised by the almost cartilaginous context (when dry) and large, thick-walled metuloids embedded in the context. The latter are completely encrusted, whereas those of the hymenial region are thin-walled, and only partly encrusted, or some may be naked, resembling then some of those of P. cremea. Hyphae are of large diameter, but naked, and exhibit occasional clamp connections, about one per cent of septa bearing them. Although recorded for New Zealand by Colenso (1895, p. 614), no specimens are in Kew herbarium from the region.

TYPE LOCALITY: Europe.