Shelf Fungi: Turkey Tail and the Ones It Is Not

Turkey tail is one of the most abundant fungi in temperate woodland and one of the most misidentified, because several unrelated brackets look similar from above.

Every one of them is separated by turning it over.

Turkey tail

Trametes versicolor.

• Thin and flexible — a few millimetres thick, and it bends without snapping when fresh.
• Concentric bands of contrasting colour across the upper surface: browns, greys, blues, greens, ochres, often with a pale outer margin. The banding is sharply defined.
• Upper surface finely fuzzy or velvety to the touch.
• Underside white to cream, covered in very fine pores — three or more per millimetre, so they need a hand lens to resolve individually.
• Grows in overlapping rosettes and tiers on dead hardwood.

The pore surface and the flexibility together are what identify it.

The three lookalikes

False turkey tail (Stereum ostrea and relatives) — banded and similar from above, but the underside is smooth, with no pores at all. That is the whole difference and it is decisive. Some Stereum species bleed red when cut fresh, which is worth knowing.

Hairy bracket (Trametes hirsuta) — thicker, with a coarsely hairy upper surface, less colour contrast in the banding, and generally whitish to grey. A pore surface, so it is a genuine Trametes, just not turkey tail.

Violet-toothed polypore (Trichaptum biforme) — similar above, but the underside is purple when fresh and breaks up into teeth rather than remaining as pores. On dead hardwood, extremely common.

The comparison

Turning it over answers it in every case, which is the same first question that runs through the whole subject — gills, pores or teeth.

The other common brackets

Artist's conk (Ganoderma applanatum) — a large perennial bracket, woody, hoof or shelf-shaped, adding a layer each year. The white pore surface bruises brown instantly when scratched, which is where the name comes from — it can be drawn on. Its presence on a living tree indicates long-established internal decay, which is the arboricultural point in mushrooms growing on my tree.

Chicken of the woods (Laetiporus) — bright orange and yellow, thick and fleshy, in large overlapping shelves. A well-known edible with real caveats: it causes reactions in a minority of people, and specimens from eucalyptus, conifers and yew should be avoided.

Birch polypore (Fomitopsis betulina) — smooth, pale, kidney-shaped, on birch only. Historically used as a strop for razors and found in the possessions of the Alpine iceman.

Tinder fungus (Fomes fomentarius) — hoof-shaped, grey, hard, perennial. Used for carrying fire for thousands of years.

Is turkey tail edible

Not in any ordinary sense. It is far too tough to eat, and it is used as a tea or an extract rather than as food.

It has a substantial research literature — polysaccharide-K, derived from it, has been used as an adjunct cancer therapy in Japan for decades and has been through clinical trials. That is a pharmaceutical preparation rather than a woodland tea, and the gap between the two is where most of the supplement marketing lives.

Which is a reason to be careful with claims rather than a reason to dismiss the fungus. The identification, at least, is straightforward.

Collecting it

• Take only from dead wood.
• Cut rather than tear, leaving the mycelium in the log.
• Check the underside on every single piece — mixed collections of turkey tail and Stereum are the normal result of collecting from a log by eye.
• Dry thoroughly before storing.

The rest of the log is worth a look too. Fallen hardwood carries oyster mushrooms, and it also carries small brown mushrooms with a ring that contain death cap toxins — oyster mushroom lookalikes covers the pairing.