Chicken of the Woods | Laetiporus sulphureus

Description

Description: [source: mushroomexpert.com]

Ecology: Parasitic and saprobic on living and dead oaks (also sometimes on the wood of other hardwoods); causing a reddish brown cubical heart rot, with thin areas of white mycelium visible in the cracks of the wood; annual; growing alone or, more typically, in shelving clusters above the ground; summer and fall, rarely in winter and spring; widely distributed east of the Rocky Mountains. The illustrated and described collections are from Illinois, Kentucky, and Ohio.

Fruiting Body: Up to 90 cm across; usually consisting of several to many individual caps arranged in a lateral shelving formation, but sometimes forming rosettes when growing on top of a fallen log.

Caps: 5–25 cm across and up to 20 cm deep; up to 3 cm thick; fan-shaped to semicircular or irregular; more or less planoconvex; smooth or finely wrinkled; suedelike; bright yellow to bright orange when fresh—often yellow-orange overall, with a bright to dull yellow margin; fading to dull yellowish and, eventually, nearly white when long past maturity.

Pore Surface: Bright to dull yellow (or rarely white; see discussion above); not bruising; with 2–4 circular to angular pores per mm; tubes to 5 mm deep; fading to dull yellowish.

Stem: Absent.

Flesh: Thick; soft and watery when young, becoming tougher and eventually becoming chalky and crumbling away; white to pale yellow; not changing when sliced.

Dried Specimens: Cap surface and pore surface retain yellow hues for at least 8 years in the herbarium, and can be distinguished from herbarium specimens of Laetiporus cincinnatus, which lack yellow hues.

Odor and Taste: Not distinctive.

Chemical Reactions: KOH negative on flesh and cap surface.

Spore Print: White.

Microscopic Features: Spores 5.5–7 x 3.5–5 µm; ellipsoid; smooth; hyaline in KOH; inamyloid. Hymenial cystidia not found. Contextual hyphal system dimitic. Contextual binding hyphae 4–14 µm wide; often branching; aseptate; smooth; walls 1–2 µm thick; hyaline in KOH. Hymenial trama generative hyphae 4–7 µm wide; tubular and unbranched; usually parallel; septate; smooth; thin-walled; hyaline in KOH. Clamp connections not found.