Biochemistry of the wood-rotting fungi. 8. Volatile metabolic products of Daedalea juniperina Murr

A sample of East African pencil cedar, Juniperus procera Hochst., which showed a crumbling brown rot in the heartwood, was received in 1937 at the Forest Products Research Laboratory and a fungus was isolated but could not at first be identified.However, some years afterwards a culture of Daedaka juniperina Murr.isolated by Dr R. W. Davidson of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington was obtained and this proved to be identical with the fungus isolated from the decayed pencil cedar.An unusual rather sickly sweet aromatic smell was produced in these cultures.Through the courtesy of Dr W. P. K. Findlay, who supplied the cultures, wewere able to investigate the metabolic products of the fungus in continuation of previous work on the odorous constituents of wood- rotting fungi (cf.Birkinshaw, Morgan & Findlay, 1952).Daedala juniperina is widely distributed but not common in the eastem and southern parts of the U.S.A. on living trees, worked timber, and stumps of Juniperws virginiana and has been reported on J. exeelBa from Russia.The sporophore, which is a thick greyish corky bracket with a daedaloid pore surface, is generally similar in appearance to