Chicken of the woods

 

Chicken of the woods Laetiporus sulphureus, growing on a decaying oak trunk in Backstone bank wood in Weardale’s Tunstall valley. This is the third crop of these spectacular toadstools that has erupted from this tree in recent years. Their webs of fungal hyphae are slowly hollowing out the oak’s trunk, turning it into something with the texture of a crumbly biscuit.

Woodland fungi are a furtive bunch, living mostly unseen under the soil or inside other organisms, digesting whatever their creeping threads can find: nature’s recyclers. Their public appearances are often fleeting, limited to a dusting of rust spores on the underside of a yellowing leaf or overnight eruptions of toadstools in autumn. But bracket fungi are a class apart: big, durable and sometimes a little sinister, and none more so than Laetiporus sulphureus.

Gastronomes relish chicken of the woods as a delicacy, comparable in texture to well-cooked chicken breast, with a rich fungal aroma. So do insects: these are fine young specimens but soon they’ll undoubtedly be full of maggots. Once the dinner-plate-sized brackets were past their best they become chewy and tough, having lost the plump fleshiness of youth.

Six years ago, I picked up a mature fallen chicken of the woods bracket and took it home, to see what might hatch out. Nothing for four days, but on the fifth a blizzard of minute flies swirled out when I lifted the lid of the container. Then, on the 10th day, something special.

It was, I think, a cork moth, Nemapogon cloacella, just 5mm long, scuttling across the surface of the decaying fungus. At first it seemed just another dull, brown micro-moth, but a magnifying glass revealed fringed, upswept wings clothed in scales of mottled brown, white and gold; an insect of exquisite beauty.

Heartwood of oak, created by a sapling’s sunlit leaves perhaps two centuries ago, broken down, molecule by molecule, reconstituted into fungal tissue, then reincarnated yet again as a tiny jewel of an insect.

Autumn on the way

The 'season of mellow fruitfulness' is creeping up on us and some fine fungi are beginning to appear. These were photographed at Auckland Park in Bishop Auckland today.

Giant polypore Meripilus giganteus on an old tree stump. Two more photos below.

Chicken-of-the-woods Laetiporus sulphureus on an ancient sweet chestnut.

A second specimen of chicken-of-the-woods on the same tree.

I think this, high up on a white poplar stump, might also be chicken-of-the woods, but it was quite withered. Wish I'd seen it in its prime.

Beefsteak fungus Fistulina hepatica on an ancient sweet chestnut

Chicken-of-the-woods

This magnificent and still-expanding chicken-of-the-woods Laetiporus sulphureus is growing in a dead oak tree alongside Durham University Botanic Garden's woodland nature trail. So far it has only produced two tiers but there may well be more by the time it reaches maturity, with the largest up to 40cm. in diameter. The underside of each bracket is covered in countless tiny pores which will soon begin to shed spores. 

In this more conventional eye-level view you can see the yellow liquid that often exudes from this fungus. According to M.C. Cooke's British Fungi, published in 1884, and which I picked up in an antiquarian bookshop a while ago, 'as this fungus dries it becomes covered in beautiful crystals of oxalate of potash'. More interestingly, Cooke mentions that 'during decomposition this plant emits a bright phosphorescent light...' Now that is something I really must see: as darkness falls, spooky glowing lights in the woodland. The fungus will probably take two or three months to reach maturity and begin to decompose, just as autumn arrives.