Beech Heart Rot
(Beech Bracket, or Cocoa-spored Bracket)
Description
Fruit-body perennial, bracket-like. Cap 10-30 x 10-25 cm, 4-10 cm thick. Upper surface irregularly undulate, cru. Stem hard, not impressible, matt, yellow-brown to dark brown or black-brown, often powdered rusty brown with spores, with obtuse, cream to yellowish growth zone.
Tubes each layer 10-15 mm long, red-brown. Pores 4-5 per mm, circular, white to cream, turning permanently brown when damaged, without galls. Flesh corky, tough, dark red-brown. Smell faint.
Spore-print colour brown.
Occurrence
Fairly common on trunks of living deciduous trees or stumps of deciduous trees (Willow, Beech, Oak, Maple, Horse chestnut Catalpa).
Parasitic. (Saprophyte).
Related and/or similar species
- Ganoderma lipsiense