Artist’s Bracket

Artist’s Bracket Ganoderma applanatum (Pers.) Pat. (illustrated 25% life size) Bracket 10–60×5–30cm across, 2–8cm thick, more or less flat, semicircular, margin acute; often pallid, grey-brown, umber or cocoa-coloured; hard and corky, glabrous, upper surface knobbly, concentrically grooved, covered with a hard, wrinkled crust. Flesh cinnamon-brown, thinner than the tube layer; taste bitter, smell mushroomy. Tubes 7–25mm long in each annual layer; brown. Pores 4–5 per mm, circular; white, bruising brown. Spores 6.5–8.5×4.5–6¼, mostly 8×5.5¼, ovate-elliptical, truncate at one end; brown-ornamented. Hyphal structure trimitic; generative hyphae with clamp connections, but these may be very difficult to demonstrate. Habitat on the trunks of deciduous trees, especially beech, where it causes an intensive white rot (occasionally found on pine); perennial. Occasional but until recently much confused with G. australe. Not edible.