This is an example of an arboreal fungus that occurs practically only on dead branches. The name of such a species is sporophyte. Most often I meet it on fallen birch branches, where it beautifully contrasts with its orange or red color against the background of the white bark of a birch tree.
This mushroom has a variable shape, it can be oval, kidney-shaped, fan-shaped, sometimes it looks very heterogeneous and it is difficult to define its shape at all. However, its size, like a hat, does not exceed 10-11 cm in diameter.
It is an annual mushroom, and I have never seen the same fruiting body in the following year. It is distinguished by a characteristic orange or orange-red color, which it owes to a dye called cinnabarina.
The top of the mushroom cap is delicate, velvety, becoming wrinkled, furrowed with age. The color of the young fruiting body is extremely bright orange, so much so that the mushroom can be seen from several dozen meters. In older mushrooms, the surface of the hat darkens, becomes more red, brick-red.
The mushroom does not have a classic leg, while the flesh is pale vermilion red. As with most of this type of mushroom, it is soft at first, and then hardens and becomes corky.
The fungus appears in summer and grows until autumn, it is not very common, but because of its color it is easy to find. He mainly likes deciduous trees, poplar, beech, but most often he appears on birch trees, and these are also the photos I present.
It is an inedible mushroom, but this is due to the lack of taste properties, but it has no toxic properties.
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