Help with a strange fungi

[Tony1]

Hi all

This is my 1st post.... looks like a lively site. Anyway, I'm stumped on a fungi I found last week at Waggoners Wells Surrey, growing on a Scots Pine stump. I can't find anything like it in my Roger Phillips book, can anyone please identify it?
Many thanks in advance
Tony Watson

[cybershot]

Welcome to WAB Tony. A poser for your first post and all I can suggest is start by looking at Antrodia species and see if that leads you anywhere.

Cheers

David

[diggleken]

Welcome to WAB from me too - good call by cybershot I think - Antrodia xantha is white/yellowish, so maybe that one ??
Fabulous photo by the way, gorgeous fungus.
Cheers
Ken

[Tony1]

Thanks guys. It does indeed look like Antrodia xantha.

It dosn't even feature in the Roger Phillips book of mushrooms, is there a better guide?
Tony

[ManwithNoname]

Originally Posted by Tony1

Thanks guys. It does indeed look like Antrodia xantha.

It dosn't even feature in the Roger Phillips book of mushrooms, is there a better guide?
Tony

I'd agree with Antrodia xantha. It helps with brackets if you can see what colour of rot (largely brown or white) the fungus is causing in the wood. Antrodia causes a brown rot.

Every book you can buy on fungi will have gaps in coverage. It all depends how serious you want to get and whether you want to specialise. Bracket fungi tend to be poorly covered unless you buy an expensive specialist book, such as Fungi of Switzerland Volume 2 (Non gilled fungi) or Fungi Europaei Volume 10 (Polyporaceae s.l.).

The alternative in the meantime is to acquire a range of the more general guides with the hope that together they give you a wider coverage of species.

In any event, if you want to get into identifying the less common brackets you will need to become proficient with a microscope because many of them can only be identified accurately on the basis of their microscopic characters. For example, there are several other species of Antrodia and some of them can have a yellow colour, so the only way to be certain of the identification would be to look at the spores and hyphae and key it out properly. Otherwise it's just a best guess based on how commonly certain species are found.