Oak bracket or Artist's bracket

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 fruiting body is 10-50 cm across (sometimes up to 70 cm), flat and spreading, fan-shaped or semicircular, and attached sideways to the substrate (the trunk of a broadleaf tree), with no stem. The upper surface is hard and corky, with clear concentric zones of annual growth, one zone for each year of life. It's brownish grey or olive grey, and mature brackets carry a rusty coating of spores. The margin is whitish when young and darkens with age.

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.

Underneath are tiny white pores (4-6 pores/mm). The surface is whitish cream and darkens distinctly when pressed or scratched, a key diagnostic feature. The spore print is rusty brown and often shows as a rusty coating on the trunk around the bracket.

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

No stem. The fruiting body is attached to the substrate by its side edge.

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.

The flesh is very tough, corky-fibrous and brownish chestnut, leathery and hard as wood. It's no use in cooking. The smell is faintly woody.

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

Faintly woody, nothing distinctive.