Hen of the woods or Oak bracket

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 has no stem and forms a thick cushion, half-moon or shapeless lump, 10 to 30 cm across, occasionally 40 cm, and 5 to 15 cm thick. It often grows in several tiers.

Young brackets are cream, buff or yellowish and finely velvety, with a thick, rounded margin that weeps amber drops. Later they turn rusty brown, bald and lumpy, pitted where the drops have dried, and finally almost black and cracked.

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 tube layer is up to 2 cm deep. The pores are tiny, round then angular, 4 to 6 per mm, cream-yellow to greyish, later ochre and brown, and slowly bruise brown. Drops can form on the pores too.

The spore print is pale, whitish to yellowish.

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.

There's no stem: the bracket sits directly on the trunk base, root flare or roots.

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.

The flesh is yellow-brown, rusty or reddish brown, zoned and up to 10 cm thick. It's soft, spongy, fibrous and wet when young, then corky.

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.

Old fruit bodies have a strong, unpleasant smell. The taste is bitter.