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Sulphur shelf or chicken-of-the-woods on oak

 

 

This year mushroom fans have much to see – the lavishness of the mushroom year is visible everywhere.

 

We see the beautiful sulphur shelf growing on old oaks or white willows on the trunk of the tree or on larger branches; on other deciduous trees it is found quite rarely. We come across them from late summer onwards in city parks but it also occurs on large trees growing at roadsides.

 

The fleshy annual mushroom caps grow on top of each other or side by side but joined as a collective body on the substrate. The fragile fruit bodies can be bright yellow to reddish-orange in colour. Mature fruit bodies are colourful for two-three weeks; after the spores are released they discolour and break up but on the tree bark the lighter, characteristic trace of the fungus remains.

 

In wood the fungus creates starting points for comparatively quickly proceeding brown rot. After the fruit bodies have appeared, the trunks of white willows may start breaking in some ten or twenty years. On the strong oaks the fungus does not have an equally destructive effect but causes hollows in the trunk.

 

According to literature the sulphur shelf is edible after blanching; the raw fungus is toxic to us; but not even ”grand old man of mushrooms”, Erast Parmasto, had tested the sulphur shelf for food.