Hymenochaete

Cotter River, ACT

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Identification history

	Hymenochaete	8 Jun 2016	Heino
	Unidentified	22 May 2016	KenT

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User's notes

On the dark sheltered underside of a suspended fallen tree

4 comments

Heino wrote:

24 May 2016

A fairly solid looking sheet, so possibly a species of Hymenochaete (a genus in which brown is a common colour) but there is also the odd, darkish brown species of Stereum. In Hymenochaete here are numerous very short, dark brown hairs standing out from the surface, dense but still with clear spaces between neighbouring hairs. You'd probably need a handlens to see the hairs and they are best seen if you can shine a light at a shallow angle to the surface. It's a bit like looking at a flat landscape early in the morning or late in the day, when the low sun helps show up minor irregularities, small stones, etc.

KenT wrote:

27 May 2016

I've added a close-up crop from the top right side of the second image, I don't see any obvious hairs and I've run out of usable resolution, any larger and it becomes empty magnification

Heino wrote:

27 May 2016

I should have called them bristles, to give you a better idea. They protrude beyond the surface to somewhere between a hundredth and a tenth of a millimetre. There is variation between species and of also within species. I think they are abundant in your close-up crop, probably showing more as shadows. When I look at the image at normal viewing distance it looks faintly speckled. A closer look (especially at folds) some of those speckles look a little elongated. Whenever I see what I think is a Hymenochaete, I take out my handlens (which magnifies 10x) for a better look and I try to look at a shallow angle to the surface. Magnifying glasses (often about 2-5x) are of less use. Even with a handlens the bristles may not show clearly in those specimens (or species) with very short bristles. Then it's a case of a later look under a low power microscope.

KenT wrote:

31 May 2016

I agree with your interpretation of the elongated speckles as I see them as well. I looked at the drawings for the Hymenochaete species in vol. 2 of the Fungi of Switzerland and assumed that since these structures (setae) seem to be from 5-15 microns across I would need to look at the surface with a stereo microscope to see them. I'm continually surprised at the resolution one can get out of modern camera lenses and digital sensors.

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