Trametes gibbosa on a fallen hornbeam (Carpinus betulus)

It’s seemingly the beech that tend to be host to the greatest perennial fungal abundance in Epping Forest, and so whilst looking for fungi on constituent beech trees I came across a fallen hornbeam. On one of the larger stems, I noticed a cluster of fungal brackets, which turned out to be what I strongly consider is ‘the stumpgrinder’ Trametes gibbosa (syn: Pseudotramates gibbosa). Nice to see from a general interest point of view, and also good to see from a mineralisation angle, as this fungus is a very good decomposer of deadwood (hence the name ‘stumpgrinder’). Essentially, this’ll do what a mechanical stumpgrinder does (I suppose like many Trametes species), though in a more ecologically-friendly way and less instantaneously.

Evidently quite markedly decayed already, if you look closely to the left of the image you can spot the brackets.

Here they are upon the stem.

A little closer, so that we can appreciate their morphology and colouration.

Closer still!

And the underside reveals the elongated tubes.

Taking a cross-section, we can also see the pure white inner flesh and the depth of the tube layer.

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