Jocie says “Now that you’ve all digested part 1, here’s part 2 of Alison’s late fall & winter fungi review: the fabulous Polypores!”
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Notes on polypore fungi in the Comox Valley, late fall into winter 2023-2024

Polypores are much tougher and more durable than gilled fungi, even the annual ones such as the Trametes species.   Many have a shelf-like or bracket/hoof-like growth pattern, others have stipes; some are hard (Fomitopsis, Ganoderma spp.),  others leathery and pliable (Trametes, Stereum), others quite soft (Postia and Phlebia). Some have shallow pores on the spore-bearing underside, others are wrinkled, still others smooth.  A few have what look like “gills” (see Gloeophyllum below).

Picipes badius, blackleg (formerly Polyporus badius), is found on dead and downed wood, with a smooth, leathery bright orange cap, white underside with small shallow pores, and a stipe that is mostly black (caps and one underside show in photo 9.)

Clusters of Trametes versicolor, turkey tail, have been prolific this winter on a range of hosts; see photo 10 plus Jocie’s earlier photos. The various species of Trametes have a white underside with white tiny pores.  Another common ruffled shelf polypore is Stereum hirsutum, false turkey tail, with  orange cap and lighter border, while its underside is orange and smooth. The specimen in photo 11 shows both cap and underside.  Unlike the Trametes species it is found only on dead hardwood, alder here, and often together with one of the yellow jelly “witch’s butter” fungi (Tremella aurantia) which parasitizes the Stereum (no photo of T. aurantia).

The Postia caesia  group, blue cheese polypore (photo 12), is a soft spongy shelf-like fungus on dead conifer logs, with white and bluish-green colouration on the slightly hairy cap and white angular or maze-like shallowish pores on the underside. According to MacKinnon and Luther, edibility is unknown — it only looks like blue cheese.

In photo 13, Rhodofomes cajanderi, rosy conk, is just developing. It will take on the form of a hoof-like conk with zoned cap, almost black in the centre and pink round the rim, with pink pores on the underside.  In the upper part of the photo there are diminutive “hoofs” in the making.  The red droplets however were stunning. 

Gloeophyllum sepiarum, conifer mazegill. Photos 14A and 14B show the bracket-like polypore whose underside has what look like blunt gills. The orange on the cap of this example is much brighter than the more common reddish brown.