Rigidoporus ulmarius
Encyclopedia
Rigidoporus ulmarius is a plant pathogen found mainly on broad-leaved trees. It used to be very common on elm
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The fruiting bodies are white, knobbly and relatively hard, requiring a fair amount of force to break. Older bodies may be covered with green algae, or partially covered with vegetation and leaves making them difficult to spot. They often encapsulate grass, twigs and other debris.
Tubes are 1–5 mm long in each layer, pinkish to orange when young, browning with age, each layer separated by a thin contrasting band of white flesh. Pores 5–8 per millimeter, red-orange fading to clay-pink or buff with age. Spores pale yellow, globose, 6–7.5 µm in diameter. Hyphal structure monomitic; generative hyphae lacking clamps. Habitat at the base of trunks of deciduous trees, usually elm. Season all year, perennial. Common. Not edible. Found in Europe.
A fruit body of R. ulmarius discovered in Kew Gardens in 2003 was, for a time, the largest known fungal fruit body ever discovered, measuring 150 by in diameter, and had a circumference of 425 centimetres (167.3 in). However, in 2011, a specimen of Fomitiporia ellipsoidea
significantly larger was discovered in China.
Elm
Elms are deciduous and semi-deciduous trees comprising the genus Ulmus in the plant family Ulmaceae. The dozens of species are found in temperate and tropical-montane regions of North America and Eurasia, ranging southward into Indonesia. Elms are components of many kinds of natural forests...
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The fruiting bodies are white, knobbly and relatively hard, requiring a fair amount of force to break. Older bodies may be covered with green algae, or partially covered with vegetation and leaves making them difficult to spot. They often encapsulate grass, twigs and other debris.
Tubes are 1–5 mm long in each layer, pinkish to orange when young, browning with age, each layer separated by a thin contrasting band of white flesh. Pores 5–8 per millimeter, red-orange fading to clay-pink or buff with age. Spores pale yellow, globose, 6–7.5 µm in diameter. Hyphal structure monomitic; generative hyphae lacking clamps. Habitat at the base of trunks of deciduous trees, usually elm. Season all year, perennial. Common. Not edible. Found in Europe.
A fruit body of R. ulmarius discovered in Kew Gardens in 2003 was, for a time, the largest known fungal fruit body ever discovered, measuring 150 by in diameter, and had a circumference of 425 centimetres (167.3 in). However, in 2011, a specimen of Fomitiporia ellipsoidea
Fomitiporia ellipsoidea
Fomitiporia ellipsoidea is a species of polypore fungus in the family Hymenochaetaceae, a specimen of which produced the largest fruit body ever recorded. Found in China, the fruit bodies produced by the species are brown, woody basidiocarps that grow on dead wood, where the fungus feeds as a...
significantly larger was discovered in China.