Trametes ochracea: The Ultimate Mushroom Guide

About The Trametes ochracea Mushroom

Trametes ochracea grows on standing and fallen deadwood of deciduous trees, in particular beeches and oaks.

Basidiocarps of T. ochracea are usually much paler in color than those of T. versicolor, less strongly zonate, and they lack the black layer seen in the upper context of the latter species. T. pubescens basidiocarps may also be similar but have an azonate or very faintly zonate upper surface.

Widely distributed in Europe and north to the North Cape area of Norway. Circumpolar species.

Other names: Ochre Bracket.

Trametes ochracea Identification

1. Fruiting Body

   Individual brackets and semicircular or shell-shaped, finely downy or hairy on the upper surface and usually broadly attached to the substrate. Occasionally, as seen on the left, rosette forms are produced on the tops of stumps or other horizontal surfaces.

   Caps are 1.5 to 5cm across, and they frequently overlap in layers to form much larger compound fruiting masses.

2. Fertile surface

   While the upper surface comprises concentric zones of various shades of brown, ochre and orange, the fertile underside is creamy ochre and it is covered in mainly roundish pores 1 to 4mm deep spaced at 3 to 4 pores per mm. The pore surface does not stain significantly when it is bruised.

3. Spores

   Curved cylindrical (allantoid, or sausage-shaped), smooth, 5.5-7.5 x 2.5-3µm (significantly larger than the spores of Trametes versicolor); inamyloid.

   The spore print is white.

Trametes ochracea Taxonomy & Etymology

Originally described in 1794 by Christiaan Hendrik Persoon, who gave it the binomial scientific name Boletus ochraceus, this species acquired its currently accepted scientific name in 1987 in a publication by American mycologist Robert Lee Gilbertson (1925 - 2011) and Norwegian mycologist Leif Randulff Ryvarden (b. 1935).

Synonyms of Trametes ochracea include Boletus multicolor Schaeff., Boletus ochraceus Pers., Boletus zonatus Nees, Polyporus zonatus (Nees) Fr., Polystictus zonatus (Nees) Fr., Coriolus zonatus (Nees) Quél., Trametes zonata (Nees) Pilát, Trametes zonatella Ryvarden, and Trametes multicolor (Schaeff.) Jülich.

Trametes, the genus name, comes from the prefix tram- meaning thin - implying that fruitbodies of fungi in this genus are thin in section.

The specific epithet ochracea refers to the typically ochre coloring of the upper surface of the fruitbodies of this fungus.