Birch Polypore

Piptoporus betulinus

Forests, parks, fields, roadsides. Spring, summer, autumn.

Fruiting bodies annual, large, solitary, round, hoof-shaped, cushion-like, slightly convex knob-like, attached to the substrate laterally or by a very short stem, white, greyish, greyish-yellowish, soft. Tubes white, cream, straw-coloured. Pores white, soon becoming yellowish, yellowish-brown when old. Flesh white, soft, spongy, corky. Grows in forests, parks, bogs and tussock swamps on birch snags, windfalls, dead branches and stumps, singly or a dozen or so fruiting bodies close to one another. A saprotroph, causing an active brown rot of the wood. Very common, an active decomposer of dead birch wood. A good forest sanitiser. It has attracted the interest of physicians.