Dryad's saddle or Shaggy bracket

The cap is 10-50 cm across (sometimes up to 70!), fan-shaped to semicircular, flat and spreading. Young caps have a slightly inrolled margin; older ones have a drooping, wavy edge. The surface is matte, with striking brown scaly concentric patterns on a yellowish-cream background. The base colour is yellowish cream to ochre-cream, with scales dark brown to chestnut brown, densest at the centre. Mature caps show a clear radiating striped pattern.

There's no stem: the bracket is broadly attached, semicircular, hoof-shaped or cushion-like, 10 to 25 cm across, sometimes up to 35 cm, and up to 10 cm thick. It grows singly or in tiers of two or three. The margin is thick and rounded when young, becoming thinner.

Young brackets are bright rusty orange to reddish yellow on top, densely velvety and bristly. Later they turn rusty to dark brown, almost bald, rough and cracked, and finally black, hard and brittle. Old brackets often hang on the tree all winter, and when they fall they leave a blackish mark on the bark.

Underneath are tubes ending in large white pores (1-3 mm, notably large for a polypore) that run down the stem. They're white to cream, and the spore print is white.

The pores are cream to yellowish brown, later rusty, 2 to 3 per mm, and darken when touched. The tubes can be a few centimetres long. Young brackets sometimes weep clear, yellowish or reddish droplets from the pores and margin.

Sources disagree on the spore print colour: from whitish to yellowish brown.

The stem is 3-7 cm tall and 1.5-4 cm thick: lateral, off-centre, short and stout. It's whitish at the top and dark brown to blackish at the bottom (hence the typical "black tail" at the base).

There's no stem: the bracket is broadly attached to the trunk or branch.

Young flesh is tender, soft and white, with a distinctive cucumber-and-watermelon smell; with age it very quickly turns tough, leathery and useless in the kitchen. It doesn't change colour when cut.

Young flesh is soft, spongy, wet and radially fibrous, yellowish ochre to light brown. Old flesh is dry, hard, brittle and dark brown to almost black. It turns black with KOH.

Young ones have a distinctive smell of fresh cucumber and watermelon, a key diagnostic feature. In old ones the smell is faint and neutral.

The smell is indistinct.