Species flashcards

Description

Fruiting body: The cap is 5–15 cm across, convex when young, later spreading and usually depressed or funnel-shaped at the centre. Its ground colour is whitish-yellow, ochre to orange-brown; the surface bears darker brown, concentrically arranged scales. The thin margin is often finely hairy.

Spore-bearing layer: Porous, white to cream, later cream-ochre. The pores run slightly down the stem and are wide, rounded, elongated or irregularly angular, about 0.5–2 mm wide.

Stem: 3–8 cm tall and 0.5–1.5 cm thick, usually central, less often lateral, cylindrical and tapering towards the base. Whitish, ochre to rusty yellow, brownish at the base; surface felty and scaly.

Flesh: White, soft and brittle when young, becoming leathery and tough with age. Smell weakly mushroom-like, taste mild or slightly bitter; the bitterness usually disappears during cooking.

Spores: Spore print white. Spores 12–16 × 4–6 µm, cylindrical to narrowly ellipsoid, smooth and colourless.

Occurrence: A saprotrophic species on dead, often partly buried branches, trunks and roots of broadleaf trees. It occurs especially on beech, oak, hazel, alder and willow, from late spring to autumn.

Edibility: Edible, but pleasant in texture only when young; older fruiting bodies are tough. It is a protected species in Hungary and must not be collected.

Lookalikes: It may resemble the dryad’s saddle, which is usually larger, more coarsely scaled and has a darker to blackish stem base. The tuberous polypore is smaller, more finely scaled and may grow from a sclerotium.

Note: Polyporus means “many-pored”, referring to the numerous small pores of the spore-bearing surface. The epithet tuberaster means “tuber-like”, referring to the tuber-like sclerotium from which the fruiting body may develop.

Species description: Elias Magnus Fries published the current name in 1821, based on the work of Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin and Christiaan Hendrik Persoon.

Taxonomy

1. PhylumBasidiomycota
2. ClassAgaricomycetes
3. OrderPolyporales
4. FamilyPolyporaceae
5. GenusPolyporus

• Species: Polyporus tuberaster
• Authority: (Jacq. ex Pers.) Fr. (1821)
• English name: Tuberous polypore
• Ecological status: saprotrophic
• Edibility: edible