Pycnoporellus fulgens
Description
Pycnoporellus is a genus in the family Fomitopsidaceae (order Polyporales). It is a rare polypore that lives on coniferous and deciduous trees. It has a medium-sized protruding one-year-old fruit body. Its upper surface is orange-red. The maze-like pillar on the lower surface is creamy-white and orange when aged.
It usually grows on spruce (Picea abies), but sometimes can also be found in pine, birch, and aspen. Pycnoporellus fulgens occurs rarely in Central Europe, the Baltic countries and Sweden, and in North America.
Pycnoporellus fibrillosus and Polyporus fibrillosus are synonyms.
Mushroom Identification
Ecology
Saprobic on the deadwood of conifers and hardwoods; causing a brown rot; annual; spring through fall; widely distributed across North America but absent south of roughly the 38th parallel.
Fruiting Body
Usually developing clearly defined, semicircular to fan-shaped caps, but often spreading a pore surface onto the wood below the cap; cap bright to dull orange, or orangish brown; cap surface velvety to finely hairy, often zoned; pore surface creamy to pale orange; pores angular, 1-3 per mm, becoming stretched out and tooth-like; tubes to about 6 mm deep; flesh thin, creamy to pale orange, softly corky.
Chemical Reactions
Flesh red, then black with KOH.
Spore Print
White.
Microscopic Features
Spores 6-9 x 2.5-4 µ; smooth; cylindrical to elliptical; hyaline in KOH; inamyloid. Cystidia irregularly cylindrical; hyaline in KOH; 45-60 x 4-6 µ. Contextual hyphae reddish to hyaline or ochraceous in KOH; occasionally branching; mostly thick-walled; 2-9 µ wide.
Photo sources:
Photo 1 - Author: Ireen Trummer (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Photo 2 - Author: Nina Filippova (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Photo 3 - Author: Olli Manninen (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Photo 4 - Author: Paul Derbyshire (Twizzler) (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Photo 5 - Author: Iv Merlu (Merlu) (CC BY-SA 3.0)
