Pycnoporellus fulgens

What You Should Know

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.

Pycnoporellus fulgens Mushroom Identification

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. Chemical Reactions

   Flesh red, then black with KOH.

4. Spore Print

   White.

5. 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.

Sources:

Photo 1 - Author: Ireen Trummer (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International)

Photo 2 - Author: Nina Filippova (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International)

Photo 3 - Author: Olli Manninen (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International)

Photo 4 - Author: Paul Derbyshire (Twizzler) (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)

Photo 5 - Author: Iv Merlu (Merlu) (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)