Hen of the woods or Dyer's mazegill

The fruit body is a large bushy cluster of 30-200 fused, frond-like “caps” on a shared branching trunk. Each cap is 4-10 cm wide, fan-shaped and thin, with a wavy margin. The colour is grey-brown or grey-olive, paler (ash-grey) when young and dark brown when old. The surface is smooth or finely fibrous in a radial pattern. The whole cluster weighs 2 to 15 kg.

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 hymenophore is pored, an important feature that sets it apart from frond-like gilled species. The tubes are short (2-4 mm), uneven, and run down onto the stalks of the caps. They’re whitish to yellowish. 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.

The shared trunk is thick, fleshy and whitish, branching again and again, with each branch ending in its own cap. The whole cluster stands 15-30 cm tall. There are no separate stems as such: it’s one segmented structure.

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.

Flesh white to pale cream; springy and fleshy when young, stringy and tough when old. It doesn’t change colour when cut. Young flesh has a pleasant nutty taste, rather like chicken.

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

A pleasant mushroomy smell with a nutty note, and a hint of fruit in some clusters. The taste is mild, with subtle nutty and woody notes.

There's no noticeable smell.