Coral tooth or Jelly tooth

There's no true cap. The fruiting body is coral-like and heavily branched, 4 to 18 centimetres wide and tall, made up of numerous branches fanning out from a common base. Delicate, soft spines a few millimetres long hang from the undersides of the branches. It's snow white or cream when young; with age the branches and spines take on a yellowish-brown tint. The white "coral" with its tiny spines is recognisable at a glance.

The fruit body is jelly-like, tongue-, fan-, spoon- or shell-shaped, attached at the side, and usually a few centimetres across.

The top is finely hairy at first, then almost smooth, faintly granular or suede-like. The colour varies a lot: translucent white, watery grey, grey-brown or brown, sometimes bluish grey and occasionally almost black, even on the same stump.

The hymenophore is made of spines hanging from the undersides of the branches, and the spores form on their surface. The spore print is white. A spiny hymenophore instead of gills or tubes is a hallmark of the genus Hericium and makes these mushrooms unlike anything else.

The underside is covered in crowded, soft, translucent spines 1 to 4 mm long, white or greyish, which carry on down the stem.

The spore print is white.

There is no distinct stem; the fruiting body is attached to the wood by a short common base from which the branches spread. The base is whitish and firm. The whole structure is fairly brittle, especially in mature mushrooms, when the spines become fragile.

The stem is short, attached at the side or off-centre, watery grey or whitish. On flat surfaces it can be longer and more central, and sometimes it's almost absent.

The flesh is white and tender, juicy and springy in young mushrooms, with a pleasant taste reminiscent of crab or chicken. It doesn't change colour when cut. With age, as the fruiting body turns yellow, the flesh hardens and takes on a slightly bitter taste, so only young white ones are used for cooking.

The flesh is jelly-like, soft, translucent and watery.

The smell is faint, pleasant and mushroomy, with no sharp notes. Smell isn't what identifies it: you recognise it by its unique white coral-like shape with delicate hanging spines and by its growth on dead broadleaf wood.

The smell is indistinct.