Flesh: with a fragrant smell, deep red brown and felty-fibrous.
Spore-print: dark cinnamon-brown.
Spores: long, oval with truncate apex, smooth, but reticulate on the inner surface of the inner wall giving the spores a patterned appearance when seen under the microscope; 10-11 × 6-7 µm in size.
Habitat & Distribution: This fungus is common on various trees, especially beech and can be found throughout the year.
General Information: This common Ganoderma is perennial and distinguished from other polypore groups by the complex spores. G. applanatum (Fries) Karsten is closely related, but differs in the thinner fruit-body with a thin margin, and the pale cinnamon-brown flesh; the flesh of both species contains thick-walled binding and strengthening hyphae as well as the generative hyphae.
So sensitive are the pores to bruising that if a drawing or writing is executed on the lower surface with a pin, needle or similar sharp instrument and the fungus dried, the red-brown lines produced are retained and the pattern preserved. Several fungus paintings prepared in this way were made in the early part of the century, many beautiful ones having originated in the eastern part of North America.
Plate 46. Woody fungi: Spores white and borne within tubes or on thickened plates
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Fomes fomentarius whose important characters are described below has frequently been confused with Ganoderma europaeum. It is common growing on birch in Scotland, but is less frequent south of Perth, and then grows probably more frequently on beech which is similar to the pattern found on the continent of Europe. However, it has grown in former periods in England on birch, for it was found commonly amongst birch timbers in an excavation of an early Mesolithic lake side village near Scarborough, Yorkshire.