This plant grows in woods on wood and is quite common in our woods--both the rose-colored and the translucent-brown. Captain McIlvaine calls Merulius tremellosus and M. rubellus emergency species. He says they are rather tasteless, tough, slightly woody in flavor. They are found in October and November.
Resupinate, effused, soft, papery, circumference at length free, reflexed, white, villous below. Hymenium netted, porus, pallid, tan-color.
Found on decaying-branches. Quite common.
Resupinate, fleshy, spongy, moist, tender, at first very light, cottony and white; when the veins appear they are of a fine yellow, orange or reddish-brown, forming irregular folds, so arranged to have the appearance of pores (but never anything like tubes), distilling when perfect drops of water which give rise to the specific name "weeping."
Dr. Charles W. Hoyt of Chillicothe, brought to my office two or three plants of this species that had grown on the under side of the floor in his wash-house. When he took up the floor the workmen discovered a number of pendant processes, some oval, some cone-shaped. Some were eight inches long, very white and beautiful but clearly illustrating the weeping process. The doctor called them white rats suspended by their tails.
Dædalea is used with reference to the labyrinthiform pores; so named after Dædalos, the builder of the labyrinth of Crete.
The hymenophore descends into the trama without any change, pores firm, when fully grown sinuous and labyrinthiform, lacerated, and toothed. The habits of Dædalea are very much the same as Trametes, but they are inodorous. Care should be taken not to confound them with the species of Polyporus that have elongated curved pores.
[Illustration: Figure 355.--Dædalea ambigua. One-third natural size, showing upper surface.]
[Illustration: Figure 356.--Dædalea ambigua. One-third natural size, showing the pore surface.]
The pileus is white, corky, horizontal, explanate, reniform, subsessile, azonate, finely pubescent, becoming smooth.
Pores from round to linear and labyrinthiform, the dissepiments always obtuse and never lamellate.
It is a very common growth in Ohio, found on old logs of the sugar maple. You will see the beginning of the growth in the spring as a round white nodule which develops slowly. If the same plant is observed in the summer it will be found to be gibbous or convex in form. It finishes its growth in the fall when it has become explanate and horizontal, depressed above and with a thin margin. When fresh and growing it is of a rich cream-color and has a soft and velvety touch and a pleasant fragrance. In Figure 355, showing the surface of the cap, the growth of the plant shows in the form of the zones. Figure 356 shows the form of the dissepiments. In younger specimens these are frequently round, much like a Polyporus. There is one locality in Poke Hollow where the maple logs are white with this species, appearing, in the distance, to be oyster mushrooms.