Inocutis dryophila

🏷️ Description
🔎 Identification
📜 Synonyms

🏷️ Description

Inocutis dryophila is a rare and fascinating polypore mushroom, known for its tough, hoof-like fruiting bodies and striking rusty-red to ochre hues. This critically endangered species thrives as a parasite on ancient oak trees, contributing to central trunk rot. While visually captivating, it is inedible and strictly protected, making it a treasure for mushroom enthusiasts and conservationists alike.

🛡️ Conservation Status

Critically Endangered: Collection is strictly prohibited.
Protection Measures: Vital for preserving this species and its ecological role.

💡 Fun Fact: The velvet-like texture of its cap surface makes Inocutis dryophila one of the most visually distinctive fungi in its genus!

🔎 Identification

🍄 Fruiting Body:

Shape: Shell-shaped, 1.57 to 11.81 inches (4 to 30 cm) wide, 1.18 to 3.15 inches (3 to 8 cm) thick.
Texture: Initially soft and woolly, later hard and rigid.
Surface: Velvety to hairy, with a vaguely zonal or pitted texture. Over time, it becomes smooth, radially cracked, and wrinkled.
Color: Light red to rusty-yellow when young, aging to grayish-brown. The edge is thick, dull, and slightly wavy, often lighter than the rest.

🔬 Hymenophore:

Type: Tubular.
Pore Surface: Initially reddish, darkening to brown or dark red.
Pores: Tiny, 0.2–1 mm, round to angular, often uneven, and fringed with age. Young pores exude yellowish liquid drops and may have a grayish coating.
Tubes: 0.20 to 1.18 inches (0.5 to 3 cm) long, starting whitish and aging to reddish-brown.

🌟 Spore Print: Yellowish.

Spores: Broadly ellipsoid, 6–9 × 4.5–6 μm, with a reddish or yellowish-brown tone.

💪 Flesh:

Texture: Two-layered; outer layer fibrous and reddish-brown, soft near the surface. The core is extremely hard, granular, and interwoven with brown and white mycelial threads.
Color: Reddish to brownish-rust with silky, pale red areas.
Taste & Smell: Weakly bitter; no pronounced odor.

🌳 Habitat & Distribution:

Found in oak and mixed-oak forests.
Grows on living oak trunks, occasionally on other deciduous trees.
Rarely documented; known from a single locality in Maksimir Forest Park, Zagreb.
Active during summer and autumn.