Small Imbricate Polypore     SemiTribe

This is a key to gilled mushrooms, that is, mushrooms having a definite cap with a fertile surface consisting of gills. The fruiting body usually also has a stem, although that may be lateral or absent (usually, then, the mushroom is growing from wood). You can use this key to identify mushrooms that you find.

Fertile surface usually a layer of vertical tubes, of which the mouths are visible as pores on the underside of the cap or shelf.
Fruiting bodies usually tougher or harder than the "normal" gilled mushrooms, being leathery, corky, or woody. But they can be quite tender while actively growing
Once grown, they do not decay easily, remaining on the substrate for months or years
They often grow on wood, although a few are terrestrial (even those are usually growing on buried wood)
Fruiting body is usually a flat shelf, or hoof-shaped, protruding directly from the substrate, although sometimes it may have a short stalk.
Some forms never grow away from the substrate at all, so that all that is visible of the fruiting body are the pores.
Sometimes the pores are so minute that the fertile surface seems solid, until you look closely

Growing on wood

Not fitting the other choices, not stipitate
In making choices below based on texture and size, place the emphasis on texture: if left alone, some of the smaller ones can eventually get quite big; and even the huge ones have to start out small at first

Individual caps small (max. 2-3" across)
Soft or tough, but not hard when fresh, although they may become hard when they dry out
All thin-fleshed fruiting bodies go here, especially if compound or imbricate

Diagnosis

• Fruiting in dense clusters of thin-fleshed shelving fruiting bodies

Narrow down your identification:

• Fruiting body duplex, thin-fleshed
  
• The outer half of each pore (most 1-2 per mm, a few bigger) often wears away, leaving the hymenophore a bunch of half-pores looking like a row of troughs

• Caps leathery, flexible, imbricate; caps may be partially fused with neighboring ones at the edges, but each less than an inch wide.
  
• Each cap individually attached to substrate by solid core

• Developing pore surface reddish or purple
  
• Cap white, often furry
  
• Upper context loose and fibrous, except in the most common species :-)

• Cap surface usually furry
  
• Cap either thin, tough and zonate; or whitish, thick and corky
  
• Trimitic hyphae, yet fruiting body not hard
  
• Spores inamyloid, cylindrical

Lookalikes: Bjerkandera     Genus All grey to dark grey pore surfaces go here, but pore surface may also be buff to smoky grey Cap surface creamy to greyish and velvety to hairy when young Fruiting bodies flexible, sessile, effused-reflexed, sometimes resupinate, often in imbricate clusters Causes a white rot in hardwoods (rarely on conifers)

Glossary

Mushrooms

People

Newsletter

Events