Thin Maze Flat Polypore
AKA: the Blushing Bracket.
The underside lends itself to both common names. The pore surface looks like a maze and has a tendency to bruise reddish / brown / salmon when handled.
Daedaleopsis confragosa
The upper surface is wrinkled and concentrically ridged. It grows on dead wood and occasionally from wounds on living deciduous trees. Very rarely on conifers. The thin maze flat polypore mushroom grows up to 6 inches across.
The pore surface:
look close and you can see it starting to blush just above my thumb.
My field guides say it’s a tough mushroom but they never mentioned how rubbery a fresh one is. They can be folded without breaking, just like my wife’s pancakes.
They are tough. It takes a good bit of effort to rip one apart. I had to put the camera down and use both hands. I think this is the main reason they’re not considered edible. It would be like eating a rubber sink stopper.
I hear crickets chirping in the background. Exciting huh?
Well it was for me – I rarely get to identify the mushrooms I find.
Speaking of crickets and backgrounds: I’ve linked the cricket image to my Picasa background album.
The good news – no more multiple copies of wallpaper images in different sizes.
The bad news – I have a choice of 400 or 640 pixel width I can display. The 400 is too small for my taste and the 640 too large for my blog template. Looks like I’m going to have to renovate the template again. (if I can remember how I managed to do it in the first place)
Many people believe crickets chirp by rubbing their legs together. After looking at the photo that seems improbable. Crickets chirp by rubbing their wings together. The sound is made by rubbing a special organ (stridulatory) covered with teeth (serration) at the bottom of each wing. Only males chirp. The warmer they are the faster they chirp
Cricket is also a game I’ll never understand.
I guess that’s because the only real exposure I had to the game was watching Monty Python skits back in the day.
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September 13th, 2011 at 12:03 pm
I hope that your wife doesn’t read your blog. I’m betting her pancakes taste better than that fungus.
Thanks for making me laugh.
September 13th, 2011 at 2:43 pm
Love the mushroom posts! I, too, am wondering about your wife’s reaction to the rubbery pancake analogy..
September 13th, 2011 at 9:21 pm
I look close at the pore surface.
The number of pores grow in my eye, I am under illusion and see your thumb no more.
September 13th, 2011 at 11:41 pm
I can’t believe you’re still able to find fungus this time of year. I’m so jealous, our mushrooming season comes to an abrupt end by April most years here. As for cricket, all I remember is cricket always made it rain, at the least games I watched as a kid growing up in England. Almost more reliably than washing the car!
September 14th, 2011 at 12:46 pm
It seems to me I’ve seen these dried out on stumps on a number of occasions. If they’re that tough fresh wonder what the dried ones are like.
September 14th, 2011 at 8:31 pm
I don’t know that one. Interesting.
April 9th, 2013 at 1:38 am
Great pics! Made some nice tinctures out of this one, has almost as many medical properties as reishi, however, nothing compares to the potency found in reishi, with the exception of chaga!
Take care