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.