Home / Polypores, brackets & crusts / TM0156
Turkey tail on a fallen branch
Trametes versicolor Species
Angles captured. Five field frames including two of a bracket held up to show the underside, plus three of the dried specimen.
Morphology
Thin, flexible, fan-shaped brackets in overlapping tiers. Upper surface concentrically zoned in bands of grey-green, buff and brown, with a fine velvety texture. Underside white and finely poroid, the pores too small to count by eye. Margin thin and pale.
Habitat & substrate
A fallen hardwood branch, well decayed.
Lookalikes & what rules them out
Concentric zoning, a velvety upper surface, a thin flexible texture and fine white pores together make this one of the few genuinely field-identifiable fungi in the region. The look-alikes are separated on pore size and on whether the upper surface is truly velvety.
To confirm this identification
Count pores: 3–8 per millimetre with a hand lens. Ten seconds, and the last box is ticked.
Notes
The most confident identification on this walk. Collected and dried; the dried specimen is shown alongside.
Found at Coldbrook Rd area, Hubbardston, MA on Friday, 14 August 2026 at 11:21. 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 or Stereum · Jul 31Moderate
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