Favoritos de robnorris

Cook Forest area. Cooksburg, PA. During and after the Lincoff foray, not in state park but next to it. GPS not working in area, to remote for a signal, so location data is not exact. The closest reference would be past shelter 1 leaving the park next to private cabin.

aka Cinnamon Porecrust. Found on standing dead yellow birch tree, each raised cushion-like patch 3-6" across. Usually I see this flat, with obvious pore holes, but since this grouping is vertical, the pores are vertical as well. I see the same arrangement at http://tristram.squarespace.com/home/2013/2/11/cinnamon-porecrust-fungus.html.

A good comparison of fresh vs dried E. recisa. Gets a lot darker and harder to tell apart from E. glandulosa if you're just going by color. Unless it's in the moist leaf litter, it dries out quickly.

Distinguish Exidia from Auricularia due to its many folds and tendency to only grow on sticks (especially oak, I've observed). Auricularia has a cloudy look as it's covered in tiny hairs, where Exidia looks like semi translucent jelly.

Oysters are tenacious and will keep trying to fruit until it freezes or becomes too dry. Upon drying it tends to discolor yellowish. From my understanding, P. ostreatus is the cold weather species and P. pulmonarius is primarily found in the summer, then P. populinus occurs on Populus species (aspen and cottonwood, etc). I think ostreatus is darker in color but there is a lot of variability.

And then P. citrinopileatus, not native to the states, grows whenever it damn well wants.

Growing alone and in clusters.

Cap, ca. 5.to-6 inches diameter; brown with some red tones, cracked.

Stipes, ca. 1 inch diameter; tapering slightly from wider at the apex to narrower at the base.

Bruising. Cap, pores, stipe bruised blue immediately when damaged.

Cross-section bruised blue immediately when cut.

Thanks to Arleen Bessette for ID.