page_title: Hydnellum peckii
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Hydnellum peckii / Description
caption_attribution_description: English: The fungus Hydnellum peckii Banker. Photographed in Near Cape Lookout, Tillamook Co, Oregon, USA.
context_page_description: Hydnellum peckii is an inedible fungus, and a member of the genus Hydnellum of the family Bankeraceae. It is a hydnoid species, producing spores on the surface of vertical spines or tooth-like projections that hang from the undersurface of the fruit bodies. It is found in North America, Europe, and was recently discovered in Iran and Korea and Fraser Island, Australia. Hydnellum peckii is a mycorrhizal species, and forms mutually beneficial relationships with a variety of coniferous trees, growing on the ground singly, scattered, or in fused masses.
  The fruit bodies typically have a funnel-shaped cap with a white edge, although the shape can be highly variable. Young, moist fruit bodies can "bleed" bright red guttation droplets that contain a pigment known to have anticoagulant properties similar to heparin. The unusual appearance of the young fruit bodies has earned the species several descriptive common names, including strawberries and cream, the bleeding Hydnellum, the bleeding tooth fungus, the red-juice tooth, and the Devil's tooth. Although Hydnellum peckii fruit bodies are readily identifiable when young, they become brown and nondescript when they age.
context_section_description: As in all mushroom-producing fungi, the fruit bodies (sporocarps) are the reproductive structures that are produced from fungal mycelium when the appropriate environmental conditions of temperature, humidity and nutrient availability are met. Hydnellum peckii is a stipitate hydnoid fungus, meaning that it has a cap atop a stipe (stem), and a form resembling a Hydnum—characterized by a teeth-like hymenium, rather than gills or pores on the underside of the cap. Fruit bodies growing closely together often appear to fuse together (this is called "confluence"). They can reach a height of up to 10.5 cm (4.1 in). Fresh fruit bodies exude a striking, thick red fluid when they are moist.
  The cap's surface is convex to flattened, more or less uneven and sometimes slightly depressed in the center. It is usually densely covered with "hairs" that give it a texture similar to felt or velvet; these hairs are sloughed off in age, leaving the caps of mature specimens smooth. Its shape varies from somewhat round to irregular, 4 to 10 cm (1.6 to 3.9 in), or even as much as 20 cm (7.9 in) wide as a result of confluence. The cap is initially whitish, but later turns slightly brownish, with irregular dark-brown to nearly black blotches where it is bruised. In maturity, the surface is fibrous and tough, scaly and jagged, grayish brown in the upper part of the cap, and somewhat woody. The flesh is a pale pinkish brown.
  The spines are slender, cylindrical and tapering (terete), less than 5 mm (0.20 in) long, and become shorter closer to the cap edge. They are crowded together, with typically between three and five teeth per square millimeter. Pinkish white initially, they age to a grayish brown. The stem is thick, very short, and often deformed. It becomes bulbous where it penetrates the ground, and may root into the soil for several centimeters. Although it may reach up to 5 cm (2.0 in) in total length, and is 1 to 3 cm (0.4 to 1.2 in) wide, only about 0.1 to 1 cm (0.0 to 0.4 in) appear above ground. The upper part is covered with the same teeth found on the underside of the cap, whereas the lower part is hairy and often encases debris from the forest floor. The odor of the fruit body has been described as "mild to disagreeable", or, as Banker suggested in his original description, similar to hickory nuts.
caption: The "teeth" covering the cap's underside are specialized structures that produce spores.
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