Berkeley’s Polypore Fruiting
Polypores are a group of fungi that bear their spores in tubes, or pores, rather than gills. One of the largest mushrooms to fruit on living trees is Berkeley’s Polypore (Bondarzewia berkeleyi), often found on hardwoods, especially on oak trees. Its growth is unusual in both size and form. When the fruiting body starts to emerge, it resembles a giant hand with short, fat fingers. The tips of the “fingers” expand into huge, flat, fan-like shapes up to ten inches wide that together form an irregular rosette. The rosette can be more than three feet across and can weigh up to 30 pounds.
You usually find this fungus at the base of trees, but it can fruit from the ground far from any tree if there are roots or the remnants of an old stump beneath the ground, for it is saprophytic (lives on dead or decaying trees) as well as parasitic.
Berkeley’s Polypore is edible when it is young. With age, the fruiting body becomes increasingly tough and has been compared to eating cardboard. It goes without saying that one should be sure of the identity of any fungus before consuming it. (Photo of Berkeley’s Polypore & Leo Clifford by Lawrence Clifford.)
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Boletes Fruiting
Boletes are fleshy terrestrial mushrooms that have sponge-like tubes, not gills, as most mushrooms have, under their caps. (Polypores also have tubes, but are tough and leathery and usually grow on wood.) Spores develop on basidia (club-shaped, spore-bearing structures) which line the inner surfaces of the tubes. Because the basidia are vertically arranged, the spores, when mature, drop down and disperse into the air.
The majority of bolete species are edible, but there are two reasons not to harvest them unless you are with an expert. One reason being that there are some poisonous bolete species. The second reason is that because they are large and fleshy, larvae can often be found inhabiting them, as well as parasites.
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Cinnabar Polypore Fruiting
It is very hard to miss a fruiting Cinnabar Polypore (Pycnoporus cinnabarinus) fungus due to its electric red-orange coloration (on both upper and lower surfaces). It is in a group of fungi known as polypores, which usually grow on dead trees, are shaped like shelves, not umbrellas, and have many tiny holes, or pores (as opposed to gills), on their underside, where the spores develop. Cinnabar Polypore is also known as White Rot Fungus, as it breaks down lignin and cellulose in dead trees, causing the rotted wood to feel moist, soft, spongy, or stringy and appear white or yellow. Look for it on dead cherry, birch and beech trees.
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