Home / Polypores & brackets / TM0062
Birch polypore
Fomitopsis betulina Species
Angles captured. Three frames of the brackets on the log, then two showing the underside — the frames that make the identification.
Morphology
Two hoof-like to kidney-shaped brackets, 10–15 cm across, thick and firmly rubbery. Upper surface smooth, pale grey-buff, finely cracked, with a blunt inrolled margin. The underside is a startling matte black against a pale rim — a dark, finely pored surface set within the incurved white margin.
Habitat & substrate
On a fallen paper birch, growing directly from the trunk. Host-specific.
Lookalikes & what rules them out
Essentially unmistakable: a thick pale bracket on birch and nothing else. The black underside is not typical of a fresh specimen — in a young fruitbody the pore surface is white — so these are mature, weathered, and the pore layer has darkened with age or fungal colonisation.
To confirm this identification
Nothing. The host tree plus the bracket form is conclusive.
Notes
One of only two species-level identifications in this volume, and it is the underside frames that earned it. The black pore surface is unusual enough to be worth returning to.
Found at Leominster State Forest, Leominster, MA on Thursday, 6 August 2026 at 12:02. See the full walk for that day's weather and everything else recorded.
Others in this group
Perennial polypore on an oak trunkGanoderma sp. · Oct 10Moderate
Small zoned bracketTrametes sp. · Jul 31Moderate–high
Cinnabar polypore on oakPycnoporus cinnabarinus · Aug 1High
Orange-gilled bracket on a logTapinella or Phyllotopsis · Aug 6Moderate
Brown cap on a birch logUnidentified · Aug 6Low
Zoned brackets on rockTrametes or Stereum · Aug 6Moderate
Cinnabar polypore on a stickPycnoporus cinnabarinus · Aug 6High
Bracket colony among fernsTrametes or Stereum · Aug 8Low–moderate