Lacquered Bracket
(Dark-brown Lacquered Bracket)
Description
Fruit-body perennial, fan- to flat console-shaped. Cap 15-35 x 10-20 cm, 4-8 cm thick. Upper surface waved, widely zoned, smooth, when young shiny like resin and soft, when old with a hard crust, orange or copper- to red-brown, later darker red-brown to almost black, beneath the crust yellowish, the crust often covered with a brown layer of spores, with a thick, yellow or orange-yellow to cream growth edge.
Tubes 8-10 mm long, white to cream. Pores 3 per mm, round, white to cream, turning brown when damaged, without nipple-shaped galls. Flesh concentric zoned, filamentous tough, light brown to cork-coloured. Smell pleasant, spicy.
Spore-print colour brown.
Occurrence
At the base and on stubs of old Oaks (Sweet chestnut, Elms) in parks, old lanes and estates on sand, sometimes on clay.
Rare. Parasitic.