Lenzites betulina

Dec. 2, 2008

This is actually a polypore. The underside has gills though and that made identifying this mushroom tough for me. At first I thought I had found the Turkey Tail Mushrooms I was looking for but realized upon seeing the underside I had found something else. No sweat I thought. This must be the False Turkey Tail I saw in the guidebooks. Nope. The false turkey tails have a smooth underside. Now I had to dig deeper in order to find out what this was. Than goodness I found it on a dead Birch tree. With that clue I managed to find it searching on Google.

I’m just learning to identify mushrooms so it’s easy to understand why I got confused. Shelf and bracket fungi are “not’ supposed to have gills. Thank goodness I make a habit of taking photos of the undersides. Otherwise I would have easily misidentified this mushroom.

I have to remember there are actually several gilled polypores. One thing I don’t need to remind myself is this one is inedible. For me all mushrooms are. Something about the texture of fungi turns me off more than the taste. With this one the texture wouldn’t be so bad if I was a beaver. These things are tough and woody.

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By now regular visitors don’t need to be reminded that I link many images to larger ones sized 1024 x 768. They’re good to get a closer look and to use as desktop backgrounds.