Beilschmiedia tawa (A.Cunn.) Hook.f. & Benth., on bark of dead fallen trunk. Auckland. Mt. Te Aroha, 1,500 feet, Nov. 1946, G.H.C. type collection.

Hymenophore effused, to 16 x 5 cm., 2-4 mm. thick, firm with numerous outlying islands; surface cream or isabelline, or occasionally drying some shade of brown, even, or undulating and nodose ; margin irregular, rounded, waved, finely tomentose, byssoid, sterile for a width of 2-3 mm., lifting. Pores not in strata, round or angular, often oblique, in section pallid isabelline, to 4 mm. deep, 100-150 µ diameter, or 4-5 to mm.; dissepiments 50-150 µ, occasionally to 500 µ thick, equal, of woven partly parallel hyphae, apices tapering, firmly woven, a few apical hyphae with rounded apices and crystal coated. Context 1-2 mm. thick, floccose, pallid isabelline, closely woven, not gelatinized but with coloured gelatinous matter scattered between hyphae; skeletal hyphae to 4 µ thick, lumen 1-2 µ, staining less deeply in old hyphae which are more thickened in walls, aseptate, sparsely branched, somewhat irregularly waved near ends; generative hyphae to 2 µ thick, delicate walled, tinted by stains, somewhat sparingly branched and septate, readily collapsing, clamp connections present but scanty. Cystidia present in the hymenium, hyaline or tinted yellow, clavate, to 25 x 10 µ, walls about 3 µ thick, capped with crystals. Basidial type clavate, basidia clavate, scanty, to 16 x 1 µ, soon collapsing. Spores elliptical, 9-12 x 4-6 µ, hyaline, smooth, soon collapsing.

New Zealand.

When fresh plants are white or cream, though a few may be coloured isabelline. Spores are present only in young plants, since basidia and spores early collapse, leaving only remnants attached to walls of dissepiments. Specimens possess a pleasant smell when freshly gathered, as of ripe peaches; this soon disappears when plants are dried. The large smooth spores separate the species from all save P. leucoplaca. From this it differs in the presence of capitate cystidia; thicker differently coloured hymenophore and scantily branched skeletal hyphae.