(Plants usually grow from wounds in living standing trunks, often 5-15 m above ground level. Some attain to a large size, one specimen from Lake Waikaremoana being 35 cm wide, 25 cm radius, and 29 cm thick. They are strictly annual, and fall shortly after reaching maturity, so that good specimens can be secured only when plants are still attached. Applanate forms are attached by a broad base, but ungulate or triquetous specimens usually by an extension of the vertex, although the body of the plant may be flattened against the trunk. The surface is covered with a delicate usually tan-coloured cortex which when dry is brittle and flakes away readily. Binding hyphae of the context are of the articulated bovista type, freely branched with stout main stems from which arise numerous lateral branches tapering to the apices. In the dissepiments the hyphae are much narrower and mainly parallel in arrangement. In New Zealand Piptoporus portentosus occurs on species of Nothofagus (an exception being one specimen that was taken from a dead pear stump), whereas in Australia and Tasmania it favours species of Eucalyptus. In species of both host genera it produces a destructive cubical brown heart rot. The European µm. betulinus resembles µm. portentosus closely, and possesses similar context hyphae. It differs in that spores are allantoid. Lloyd frequently listed the species for Australian and New Zealand correspondents as Polyporus eucalyptorum Fr. No type of the latter is known, so that he was not justified in using that name, especially since the species has a prior name in µm. portentosus Berk., the type of which is in Kew herbarium.) Plants usually grow from wounds in living standing trunks, often 5-15 m above ground level. Some attain to a large size, one specimen from Lake Waikaremoana being 35 cm wide, 25 cm radius, and 29 cm thick. They are strictly annual, and fall shortly after reaching maturity, so that good specimens can be secured only when plants are still attached. Applanate forms are attached by a broad base, but ungulate or triquetous specimens usually by an extension of the vertex, although the body of the plant may be flattened against the trunk. The surface is covered with a delicate usually tan-coloured cortex which when dry is brittle and flakes away readily. Binding hyphae of the context are of the articulated bovista type, freely branched with stout main stems from which arise numerous lateral branches tapering to the apices. In the dissepiments the hyphae are much narrower and mainly parallel in arrangement. In New Zealand Piptoporus portentosus occurs on species of Nothofagus (an exception being one specimen that was taken from a dead pear stump), whereas in Australia and Tasmania it favours species of Eucalyptus. In species of both host genera it produces a destructive cubical brown heart rot. The European µm. betulinus resembles µm. portentosus closely, and possesses similar context hyphae. It differs in that spores are allantoid. Lloyd frequently listed the species for Australian and New Zealand correspondents as Polyporus eucalyptorum Fr. No type of the latter is known, so that he was not justified in using that name, especially since the species has a prior name in µm. portentosus Berk., the type of which is in Kew herbarium.
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