Fruiting body:  a bracket, semicircular, spathulate; fleshy spongy; 80 – 150 mm diameter; glabrous; viscid when wet; dirty pale golden.

Stipe: absent, broadly attached to the substrate.

Hymenium: formed as a layer of pores on the lower surface 1 – 2 mm in depth; pores firm, irregular, laberinthine; becoming more or less dentate in older specimens; tubes six sided.

Smell: fragrant, distinctive, pleasant.

Flesh: red brown with the red component being soluble in alcohol.

Spore print: grey brown with a lilac purple component.

Spores: ovoid ellipsoid; 3.2 – 4 × 2.5 – 3 µm; smooth.

Basidia: narrowly clavate, 25 – 45 µm long.

Cystidia: fusiform; 20 – 45 × 6 – 12 µm.

Notes: this bracket fungus is related to the boletes and has now been placed in the Tapinellaceae. It is characterized by its bracket like shape, firm but soft tissues and its bolete like pores. It appears to be rare. The collection from Bois du sud has been sequenced.

Conservation status

Classified as ‘Data Deficient’ by the IUCN in its revision of the Fungal Red List in 2019. There is a single confirmed record from Papua New Guinea and a reported record from Sabah in Malaysia but the specimen could not be located at the Singapore Botanic Gardens, nor in Edinburgh which holds many of Corner’s collections.

Patrick Leonard 2019

Jerry Cooper sequencing 2020