Chicken of the woods or Dyer's mazegill

The fruiting body is bushy, with 5-30 overlapping fan-shaped caps on a shared base. Individual caps are 10-30 cm across and 6-30 cm tall, flat, spreading, fan-shaped and fleshy. The surface is smooth or finely felted; young caps glow yellow-orange, like fresh sulphur, and look glossy in wet weather. The colour is a striking sulphur-yellow to orange-yellow, typically shading from a rich orange centre to a yellow or cream margin. Older caps fade to pale yellow and cream.

The fruit body is round, fan-shaped or a rosette, flat or shallowly funnel-shaped and often lobed, 10 to 30 cm across and 1 to 5 cm thick. It can grow in two or three tiers or as several fused together, and it engulfs needles, twigs and grass.

The surface is velvety or felty, later almost bald, lumpy and concentrically zoned. Young ones are sulphur yellow to orange; then the centre turns rusty to dark brown while the rim stays bright yellow for a while. Old ones are dark brown to almost black, dry and light.

The underside is a tube layer with fine sulphur-yellow pores (2-4 pores/mm), coloured sulphur-yellow to orange. Spore print: white.

The pores are large and irregular, 1 to 3 per mm, angular and wavy like a maze. They're yellow, greenish yellow or olive at first, then rusty and dark brown, and darken when touched. The tubes are shallow, usually under 1 cm, and often run down the stem.

The spore print is whitish to pale yellow.

No distinct stem — the caps attach to the substrate by a broad base or a short lateral stem.

The stem is short and thick, up to 6 cm long and 2 to 5 cm wide, brown and velvety, central or off-centre and tapering downwards. On stumps the bracket can have no stem.

In young brackets the flesh is tender, meaty, juicy and cream-yellow, much like chicken breast. In old ones it's tough, leathery, fibrous and inedible. It doesn't change colour when cut. The smell is distinctive, sourish-fruity and mushroomy, with a hint of fresh cucumber, and the taste is mild and delicately mushroomy, with a hint of chicken.

Young flesh is soft, spongy, wet and yellow-orange to rusty. Old flesh is dry, fibrous or corky, brittle and very light.

A distinctive sourish-fruity smell with a hint of fresh cucumber, and an easy one to recognise.

There's no noticeable smell.