Home / Polypores, brackets & crusts / TM0014
Small zoned bracket
Trametes or Stereum Genus
Angles captured. Three views of the same small bracket at slightly different distances.
Morphology
Single fan-shaped to semicircular bracket ~3 cm across, thin and leathery, upper surface finely velvety with concentric zones in cream, buff, grey and pale brown, margin thin and white. Attached laterally, no stipe.
Habitat & substrate
On a small piece of decaying hardwood lying in leaf litter, shaded, with green herbs overhanging. Saprotrophic, white-rot habit.
Lookalikes & what rules them out
Trametes versicolor (turkey tail) is the obvious call, but Stereum ostrea (false turkey tail) looks identical from above.
To confirm this identification
Look at the underside. Fine white pores = Trametes; smooth buff surface with no pores = Stereum. This single check resolves it.
Notes
Corrected. Genus confidence lowered; the deciding character — pored versus smooth underside — was never examined, so Stereum was never actually excluded.
Found at Massasoit Rd area, Worcester, MA on Friday, 31 July 2026 at 18:09. 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
Cinnabar polypore on oakPycnoporus cinnabarinus (= Trametes cinnabarina) · Aug 1High
Zoned brackets on rockTrametes or Stereum · Aug 6Moderate
Birch polyporeFomitopsis betulina or Fomes fomentarius · Aug 6Moderate
Cinnabar polypore on a stickPycnoporus cinnabarinus (= Trametes cinnabarina) · Aug 6High
Bracket colony among fernsTrametes or Stereum · Aug 8Low–moderate
Turkey tail on the fallen logTrametes versicolor · Aug 8Moderate–high
Bracket colony on the rock ledgeTrametes or Stereum · Aug 8Low–moderate