Blushing bracket or Turkey tail

There's no stem: the bracket is semicircular, kidney- or fan-shaped, flat or slightly convex, often with a hump where it's attached, 5 to 15 cm across, up to 20 cm, and 1 to 4 cm thick. It grows singly or in tiers, and sometimes in rosettes on top of logs.

Young brackets are whitish or leather-yellow on top, then reddish brown, brick red, greyish or blackish. The surface has concentric zones and grooves, radial wrinkles and small warts, mostly near the base. The margin is paler. Old brackets darken and can last for years.

There is no stem: the bracket sits directly on the wood. It's a thin, leathery fan or semicircle, usually 2 to 8 cm across, up to 10 cm, and just 1 to 3 mm thick, up to 5 mm at the base. Fresh brackets are flexible and bend slightly. They grow in overlapping tiers or rosettes and often fuse at the edges.

The upper surface is velvety, like fine felt, with alternating hairy and smoother concentric zones. The colours vary enormously: brown, grey, blue-grey, ochre, cinnamon and almost black, but the margin is always the palest band, white or cream. Older brackets can be tinged green with algae.

The underside starts white to cream, as if frosted, then turns beige, grey-brown and dark brown. When pressed or scratched, the fresh underside blushes pink to red, then turns brown.

The pores vary a lot: round near the base, then slits and mazes, and almost gill-like towards the edge, 0.5 to 1.5 mm across. The spore print is white.

The underside is white to cream, turning pale brownish with age, and covered in tiny round pores, 3 to 6 per millimetre, which become more angular as it ages. The tubes are very short, up to about 1.5 to 2 mm. The pore surface doesn't change colour when pressed.

Those pores are what separate it from hairy curtain crust, which is completely smooth underneath. The spore print is white.

There's no stem: the bracket is attached to the wood by its side.

There is no stem. The bracket is attached to the wood by its side, along a broad base.

The flesh is corky and leathery, hard when dry, wood-coloured, pale rusty or brownish, fibrous when broken and up to 2 cm thick.

The flesh is thin, white, tough and leathery, and doesn't change colour when broken. In cross-section a thin dark line shows between the hairy upper surface and the white flesh.

The smell is indistinct.

The smell and taste are not distinctive and are no help in identification.