At first abundantly porous, but toothed from the first, at length quite as in Hydna.
On stumps and dead branches. November to February. Stevenson.
This spreads in irregular patches on the surface of decaying wood. The pores for a small space round the margin are round and distinct, but toward the center are greatly lengthened out, lying one upon another in an imbricated manner. The color is white at first, when old it changes to a yellow-brown, and at last to a dirty fuscous black. Bolton.
At first it looks more like a small white orbicular resupinate Polyporus than an Irpex. Peck.
The species is common and can be collected at most times of the year. When fresh and moist it can be shaved from its host plant. Goodly quantities can thus be obtained. It stews to a firm gelatinous mass of pleasant flavor. The lost hunter need not die of starvation in any woods if he will but study the tree-growing fungi, and especially the small species, hitherto insignificant in food circles.
I. car´neus Fr.—resembling the color of flesh. Reddish, effused, 1–3 in. long, cartilaginous-gelatinous, membranaceous, adnate. Teeth obtuse and awl-shaped, entire, united at the base.
It inclines to Radula and Phlebia. Stevenson.
On tulip poplar, Haddonfield, N.J., September, 1892; on hickory, Angora, Philadelphia, September, 1897. McIlvaine.
The entire fungus is good, cooking like a Hydnum.
I. defor´mis Fr.—deformed. White, effused, crustaceous, thin, circumference pubescent, somewhat flaxy. Teeth extended in awl-shape from a minutely porous base, thin, somewhat digitato-incised (cut in finger-shape), 1–2 lines long. Fries.