Trametes versicolor false tails

Two irly unrelated but similar fungi are among the most commonly encountered and possibly the best known of all North American fungi. They are both turkey tails, and the one so abundant around here is seen above.Another shot, showing how large numbers of them can crowd together on a log is below:

In the picture notice that the funguss top view is shown above while the bottom half of the picture shows the bottom view of the same organisms. The larger tail is about two inches (5 cm) across.

The two turkey-tail species seen only from above can be hard to distinguish. However, when you compare their bottom suces you see that theyre completely different kinds of fungi. The bottom suce of one species is conspicuously honeycombed with minute holes or pores, false tails while the bottom of the other is smooth. By convention, the one with the holes is the True Turkey Tail while the smooth-suced one is the False Turkey Tail. You can see that ours is smooth- suced, so its the False. Its STEREUM OSTREA.

Our False is a kind of crust fungus, a member of the fungus order Russulales. In contrast, the True, Trametes versicolor, is a polypore fungus, a member of the fungus order Polyporales. To get a fix on how distantly related the two fungi are, remember that among birds we have the Penguin Order and the Hummingbird Order. So, being in different orders as are the True and False Turkeytails implies profound differences.

Where I grew up in Kentucky, the True Turkey Tail was the overwhelmingly most common species, while in southwestern Mississippi the False is by r the most common. Curiously, false tails not only are the two species almost identical when seen from above, but also both are saprobic on dead hardwoods, which means that they take nutrients from dead wood. Both cause a white rot of the heartwood o,r sapwood.

Its unfortunate that our species is known as lse, for its just as true as the other. I think its the old story of early field guides in the US having been produced mostly by Northeastern naturalists. True Turkey Tails were most common up there, so when they discovered our species it was lse according to their mind-sets. I call ours just plain Turkey Tail except when talking with anyone who really might be interested in fungus phylogeny.

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