Dacryobolus sudans

 

At arm's length the fruitbody may seem to be no more than a flat, featureless patch. A closer look with a handlens shows it to consist of numerous short teeth that protrude from a flat sheet. The fruitbody is initially white to creamy but with age darkens to a pale tan. The conical teeth may be up to a millimetre long (but generally no more than half that) and tooth density is variable in this species with Maekawa (see references) giving the range as 5-15 per square millimetre.

 

At the tip of a tooth in the fresh fungus you see a tiny droplet, no wider than the tooth, and the droplet may remain as a brownish, resinous bead in the dried fungus. Eriksson & Ryvarden (see references) write: "teeth provided with an apical tuft of hairlike hyphae, which excrete a drop of viscid liquid, in the living and wet fungus looking like a glittering pearl, in the herbarium specimens often disappearing through handling or drying, but sometimes remaining rather unchanged".

 

The fruitbodies have a somewhat waxy consistency, grow on the lower surfaces of dead wood and generally spread to no more than a few square centimetres.

 

Look-alikes

You find flat-and-toothed fruitbodies in various genera and whiteish/brownish colours are common. The presence of the droplets/beads on the tips of the teeth would certainly suggest Dacryobolus sudans but you need to be sure of those droplets. For example, do not confuse larger, and randomly placed, condensation droplets of water with the viscous products of fungal secretion.  Confirmation of the latter is best done with a 10x handlens or a look at an enlargement of a high resolution photo to check that tiny droplets are consistently present on the tips of the teeth.

 

References

Eriksson, J. & Ryvarden, L. (1975). The Corticiaceae of North Europe, Volume 3, Fungiflora, Oslo.

Maekawa, N. (1993). Taxonomic study of Japanese Corticiaceae (Aphyllophorales) I, Reports of the Tottori Mycological Institute, 31, 1-149.

Dacryobolus sudans is listed in the following regions:

Canberra & Southern Tablelands


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Species information

  • Dacryobolus sudans Scientific name
  • Common name
  • Not Sensitive
  • Local native
  • Non-invasive or negligible
  • Machine learning
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Location information

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