Beefsteak Polypore
(Ox-tongue)
Description
Fruit-body annual, bracket-like to tongue-shaped, laterally attached. Cap 7-20 x 10-20 cm, 2-5 cm thick. Upper surface rough, salmon or orange-red to wine-red or rusty brown, often slimy-sticky, occasionally with moisture dripping from the margin, with acute margin.
Tubes 5-10 mm long, whitish cream. Pores 2-3 per mm, circular, whitish to yellowish, often with guttation drops. Flesh juicy, soft, white-yellow to orange-red or wine red. Smell pleasant. Taste somewhat sour.
Spore-print colour white.
Edible.
Occurrence
Common at the base of or on wounds on the trunks of living Oak and on Oak stumps.
Parasitic.