21 Friday Dec 2018
I’ve been collecting these images of Turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) for the past couple of months, thinking they would be appropriate for the last Fungi Friday before Christmas seeing as how a lot of people eat turkey for their Christmas dinner.
So, merry feasting … but not on these!
07 Saturday Oct 2017
Tags
bracket fungus, fungi, fungus, National Fungus Day, Trametes versicolor, Turkey tail, Turkeytail, UK Fungus Day
Sadly, I don’t see a lot of fungi in my local parks and nature reserves, and I’ve found this year that other events have clashed with the fungi forays organised by the Glamorgan Fungus Group so I haven’t been out with them much either. However, I have been taking photos of the fungi I do find and so, in honour of today being National Fungus Day here in Britain, I thought I’d share these photos of Turkeytail (Trametes versicolor).
Turkeytail is one of the most common bracket fungi and you can find it growing on dead logs and fallen trees in almost every forest and woodland but what I love about this fungus is its incredible variation. With colours ranging from beige, yellow and orange through to green, brown and even blue, each bracket is a work of art.
19 Tuesday Jan 2016
Posted in fungi, nature, nature photography
The Turkey tail (Trametes versicolour) is surely the multi-storey condominium of the fungus world. This is one of a huge range of bracket fungi and, as the name suggests, bracket fungi resemble shelves or brackets growing from the sides of tree trunks, branches and logs in forests and woodlands (or condominiums, with large balconies, ranging down the sides of cliffs, if you have an imagination like mine).
Turkey tail brackets range in size from 20 to 100mm wide and display concentric zones of colour in shades of beige, yellow, orange, brown and even blue. The common name of Turkey tail originated in North America, as these bands of colour apparently resemble the multi-hued tail of their wild turkey, and this is an extremely variable fungus so no two groupings have the same colour patterns (see slideshow below).
Not only lovely to look at, the Turkey tail is also useful medicinally. Asian people have long extolled the virtues of Turkey tail tea, and science has now proven that this fungus contains polysaccharides, derivatives of which have proven effective both in boosting the body’s immune systems in the fight against cancer and in the actual treatment of certain types of cancer.
