Tubes: whitish to yellowish and decurrent with large, angular, irregularly fringed, whitish or cream-coloured pores.
Flesh: with strong, not very pleasant smell, cream-coloured or white.
Spore-print: white.
Spores: long, oblong or elongate ellipsoid, hyaline under the microscope (10-15 × 4-5 µm) and not blueing in solutions containing iodine.
Habitat & Distribution: An easily recognisable fungus growing on stumps and old living trees, especially of sycamore and elm where it often forms tiers of caps from late spring until autumn; however, they decompose rapidly and almost completely disappear by the next year when new fruit-bodies may appear in the same place, a phenomenon which may take place for several consecutive seasons.
General Information: The genus Polyporus is in most text-books, a big and unwieldy genus joining together all fleshy, annual fungi possessing tubes; even the boleti (see [p. 32]) have been included! Many of these species are now considered less closely related one to another than previously thought. Boleti differ from polypores, however, in their less tough and distinctly putrescent fruit-body, and in the fact that the margin of the cap extends but does not continue to grow during the life-cycle; the margin of the polypore fruit-body is active and may burst into growth again when favourable weather conditions occur. The ‘Scaly polypore’ has a flesh which consists of two types of hyphae: (i) hyphae of unlimited growth with abundant protoplasmic contents which stain easily and which collapse on drying; and (ii) thick-walled, strengthening hyphae which bind the thin walled hyphae together. Laetiporus sulphureus (Fries) Murrill ‘Sulphur polypore’ has a single type of hyphae in the tubes, i.e. thin walled generative, and only a few binding hyphae in the flesh. It has an orange cap with a rather thick, sulphur or chrome-yellow margin, sulphur-yellow tubes and pores and yellow, then pale buff, flesh. The spore-print is white and the spores hyaline, pip-shaped and medium sized, (5-7 × 4-5 µm).
Plate 44. Woody fungi: Spores white and borne within tubes—fruit-body annual
![[Larger illustration]](#467779198995390083_illo141lg.png.id-853109247195353228.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
Illustrations: P. squamosus—F 43b; Hvass 267; LH 75; NB 1291; WD 941. L. sulphureus—Hvass 268; LH 73; NB 1293; WD 942.