These are autumn memories when I went to search for noble porcini mushrooms. The harvest was so big that it was difficult to divide attention and look for mushrooms other than boletus - but it succeeded.

My attention was caught by a rather handsome representative of the Giant polypore species. And although the Giant polypore mushroom is edible, and the specimen was quite young, I did not take it to my basket, because the season for boletus mushrooms is short, and not always.

The name of the Giant polypore is not accidental. Fruit bodies grow in clusters weighing sometimes several dozen kilograms.

One mushroom usually consists of a dozen or so caps growing from one root, base, and in this form its diameter can exceed even 1 m. The fungus, however, is not long-lived and usually lives for one year.

The brown cap of the mushroom is tiled, fan-shaped and the individual caps overlap. They have clear signs of growth which manifest themselves as striations.

The stem is practically absent, it is in the form of a thickening produced by caps growing on each other.

Hymenophore are white tubes that darken when damaged.

The flesh is white in color and darkens when damaged. The mushroom is edible when young, with age it becomes stringy and unpleasant in taste and smell.

Although it is a large mushroom, it is rarely seen. In European conditions, it appears in summer and grows until autumn. It is an annual fungus.

It grows at the base of deciduous trees, or on stumps after felling trees, covered with moss. Favorite sites are oak, ash, hornbeam, maple, birch, poplar, beech.

But since I already mentioned that the main purpose of the trip to the forest was to hunt porcini mushrooms, I will boast of a small harvest. they may not be impressive, but all the specimens found were healthy, so the efficiency is 100%

Enjoy 😉