Crimped gill or Turkey tail

Thin fans, shells or kidneys 1 to 2 cm across, up to 3 cm, attached at the side or at one narrow point, in dense overlapping tiers; neighbours often fuse. On the top of branches it can form rosettes.

The upper surface is finely felty or velvety, zoned in tawny orange, orange-brown and yellow-brown, with a pale or white wavy edge that's often rolled under. Young ones are whitish and turn browner with age.

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.

There are no gills or pores. The underside is pale, dirty white, greyish or tinged blue-grey or greenish, wrinkled into radial, winding, forking folds like crimped pastry.

The spores are tiny and sausage-shaped.

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, or only a trace: it's attached to the wood at the side or at one narrow point.

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

The flesh is thin, soft and pliant when fresh and brittle when dry.

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.