Turkey Tail

Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor) is probably the most frequently photographed bracket fungus in the world. It is thin, tough and leathery, shaped like a small fan or rounded shell, and marked with sharply defined concentric bands that alternate not only in colour but in surface texture, some velvety and matt, others smooth and silky. The overall effect resembles the spread tail of a displaying turkey.

The genus Trametes belongs to the Polyporaceae and contains a number of thin, tough, annual bracket fungi with white pore surfaces and white rot decay strategies. T. versicolor is by far the commonest and most cosmopolitan, occurring on dead broadleaved wood across every temperate and subtropical region of the world.

Its colouring is famously variable, which is what the epithet versicolor records. Zones may be blue-grey, brown, ochre, cream, near-black, rust, or in shaded damp conditions a distinct green from algae colonising the surface. Despite this variability, the combination of thin leathery flesh, velvety zoning, a sharp whitish margin and a finely porous white underside is consistent.

Fruiting body

Brackets are 3-10 cm across but only 1-3 mm thick, semicircular, fan-shaped or shell-shaped, with a thin, often wavy and slightly lobed margin. They are attached broadly and directly to the wood with no stipe, and typically grow in dense overlapping tiers, shelving rows or, on cut log ends and horizontal surfaces, complete circular rosettes.

Upper surface

The key character. It is marked with numerous narrow concentric zones that contrast in both colour and texture: velvety, finely hairy bands alternating with smoother, shinier ones, so that the surface catches light unevenly. Colours vary enormously between and within collections. The outermost band is nearly always a pale cream to white margin on actively growing brackets.

Pore surface

The underside is white to pale cream, ageing yellowish or buff, with minute round to slightly angular pores at a density of roughly 3-5 per millimetre, fine enough to look almost smooth at arm's length but clearly porous with a hand lens. The tube layer is very shallow, under 1 mm deep.

Flesh & spore print

The flesh is white, tough and leathery, no more than about 1 mm thick, and flexible when fresh, becoming rigid and brittle when dry. There is no distinct stipe. The spore print is white.

Trametes versicolor grows on dead broadleaved wood of almost any kind: fallen logs, standing dead trunks, cut stumps, sawn log ends, fallen branches, fence posts and worked timber left outdoors. Beech, oak, birch, willow, cherry, ash and poplar are all commonly colonised, and it occurs occasionally on conifer wood. It also appears on the dead parts of living trees and on wood chip.

Brackets are present all year round, since dead ones persist for many months, but fresh growth with bright zoning and a clean white margin is most abundant from late summer through autumn and into winter. The species is genuinely cosmopolitan, recorded from Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa and Australasia in temperate and subtropical zones alike.

Turkey Tail is a saprotroph and one of the most important white rot fungi of temperate hardwood forests. Its mycelium secretes enzymes capable of breaking down lignin, the tough polymer that stiffens wood, alongside cellulose and hemicellulose. The result is that decayed wood becomes pale, soft, fibrous and stringy rather than crumbling into cubes as it does under brown rot, and the carbon locked in dead trunks is returned to the ecosystem.

It is an aggressive early to mid-stage coloniser, often forming visible dark demarcation lines where its mycelium meets that of a competing fungus in the same log, producing the pattern known as spalting. The thin, tough, weather-resistant brackets survive freezing and drying and can resume spore production when rewetted, allowing a single fruiting body to release spores intermittently over an extended period. Old brackets provide shelter and feeding sites for beetles, springtails and other invertebrates.

Hairy Curtain Crust (Stereum hirsutum) and its relatives form similar thin zoned brackets but have a completely smooth to slightly wrinkled underside with no pores at all, and their upper surfaces are usually yellow-orange and coarsely hairy. Hairy Bracket (Trametes hirsuta) is thicker, with a densely and coarsely hairy grey-white upper surface in duller zones and larger pores. Trametes ochracea is thicker and more strongly ochre-brown with less contrast between zones.

Purplepore Bracket (Trichaptum abietinum) grows on conifer wood and has a violet to purplish pore surface, at least on the fresh margin, and its pore layer becomes toothed with age. Lumpy Bracket (Trametes gibbosa) is thicker and whitish with elongated, maze-like pores rather than the fine round pores of Turkey Tail.