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Swore bracket fungi were boring until I spent 3 hours in the rain trying to match one in my yard
I always skipped past the shelf fungi on my old maple because they all looked like plain brown bumps to me. Last Saturday I grabbed my Peterson guide and a flashlight because I wanted to know what the heck was growing near my feeder, and I sat there in the drizzle for almost 3 hours flipping pages trying to match the underside pores. Turns out it was just a common turkey tail, which I felt dumb about, but now I actually stop and check the bark before I even look at the birds. The weird part is I got 4 new yard birds that morning just because I was staring at a dead stump so long. Anyone else get sucked into a fungus rabbit hole while waiting on a warbler?
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riley431d ago
Wait, are you sure it was a turkey tail? Real turkey tail (Trametes versicolor) has a white pore surface underneath, and if you were seeing pores that didn't match anything in the book, it might have been a lookalike like false turkey tail (Stereum ostrea), which is super common on dead maples and has a smooth underside instead of pores. I only ask because I made that exact mistake for like two years, kept calling everything turkey tail, and then a mycologist friend flipped one over and showed me the difference and I felt even dumber than before. The color bands on top can look almost identical, so the underside is really the only way to tell them apart. Either way, three hours matching pore shapes in the rain is a solid rite of passage, and the free warbler lifers are a nice bonus for your trouble.
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