Northern Ontario, Canada
Seems like a pretty standard fungi to me
Perhaps a level for a platform video game
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
242 points (98.4% liked)
pics
25600 readers
299 users here now
Rules:
1.. Please mark original photos with [OC] in the title if you're the photographer
2..Pictures containing a politician from any country or planet are prohibited, this is a community voted on rule.
3.. Image must be a photograph, no AI or digital art.
4.. No NSFW/Cosplay/Spam/Trolling images.
5.. Be civil. No racism or bigotry.
Photo of the Week Rule(s):
1.. On Fridays, the most upvoted original, marked [OC], photo posted between Friday and Thursday will be the next week's banner and featured photo.
2.. The weekly photos will be saved for an end of the year run off.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://mastodon.world/about
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Never seen this kind before in my neck of the woods.
Perhaps they're less common round by you, but over in the UK you see polypores like this all through autumn if you ramble about in wooded areas
"Chicken of the woods" is a somewhat common one that is pretty tasty (though that's not what this one is)
Must be "tuna of the woods" then
Albacore of the shrubbery if you're on a budget.
I thought it was herring
Make sure to harvest these in seyda neen for the mages guild
Just keep running, just keep running...
Bungler's Bane grows on trees and sometimes other things. It looks like the tree has brown shelves. Ajira warns you not to eat Bungler's Bane.
Now Ajira will win the bet with Galbedir
Now outlander will help himself to soul stones
Out here on the west coast, I’ve seen bracket fungus as large as a few feet across. This one on southern Vancouver Island is about 2 feet.
Those fungi are not especially weird.
This is so gnomes can double jump up to their tree house.
reishi, neat!
I make health tonics with these 😁
Cool! Thanks. I was thinking...they kinda look like turkey tail, but the color spectrum is lacking...what other shelf mushrooms (conks) are there?
definitely not turkey tail
they look a lot like reishi to me, tbh - definitely some kind of Ganoderma spp. but probably not the artist conk, and unless it's hemlock I doubt it's G. tsugae, and since G. lucidum is only in Asia it's not that. There are like 16 different reishi species native to North America, so it's one of those.
If the tree is a conifer, it's possible it could be a reishi look-alike, the species complex Fomitopsis pinicola, but it doesn't look like a conifer to me, so I still think it's a reishi.
There are many, many shelf fungi, but not all of them are reishi look-alikes so I think this is probably just reishi, tbh.
What's weird about it?
I've never seen fungi like these.
It's actually quite common but its a parasite and will kill the tree eventually
Ooohhh, that makes sense because we have a lot of these in my local forest and most trees that have them are either dead or dying. For the longest time we thought they only grew on dead trees until we saw some on a few living trees. Your explanation has cleared up some things for us! Thanks :D
Yeah I didn't figure this out by myself either! It's hard imagine such a little thing can kill such big trees
Yeah. Especially when they look so pretty :S
Or the tree is already dead. Seen similar funghi on trees that were dead, but still standing.
Some of these you can eat and others make great firestarters. That’s all I remember about them
Fern gully
I've played enough peak to know these are essential when trying to make a jump that looks like you should make, but probably won't.
Squishy or solid?
Is that the difference between poisonous and ok or...?
solid
You're good then. These are totally normal.
I feel like I've played half a dozen platformer games with mushrooms placed exactly like this.