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Many tree fungi today are used in drug formulations and alternative medicine – do we recognize them?

 

The present season brings out many of them ordinarily leading a modest life more prominently. The black-coloured Phellinus nigricans belongs to the polypore group of fungi. We can find it on birch trunks and stumps, that is, in birch forests, and its development still continues in weather such as now; it doesn’t stop until cold arrives. The semi-circle shaped, quite hard domed cap is blackish brown, densely covered with furrows. The light brown underside has pores characteristic of the fungus; to study them needs a magnifying glass. In early spring extremely tiny spores ripen in the lower layer of pores. Having been spilled out the spores are carried away by air movements or winds. Only trees with injured bark or with broken branches get infected by the spores that land there.

 

In birch trunks that have been infected by Phellinus nigricans spores hardwood trunk rot develops, which is stringy, pale in colour and destroys the value of the timber.