This page is NOT to be used for identification for eating!
Chicken of the woods is a polypore mushroom that is parasitic and saprobic on living and dead oaks (also sometimes on the wood of other hardwoods). It typically grows in large clusters in summer and fall.
The ones I have found have been huge, and definitely make for more than one meal. You do have to cook them before eating. I find they have a very mild flavor, and do have a texture similar to chicken.
There is a look-alike mushroom called Jack o’ Lantern that is poisonous, so please do not go picking orange mushrooms and eating them unless it not been properly identified by a qualified professional!
Alternate Names: Sulphur Shelf Size: 5 - 30 cm across and up to 20 cm deep; up to 3 cm thick. Family: Fomitopsidaceae Habitat: Grows on living and dead oaks trees Identifiers: Fan-shaped to semicircular (or irregular) and it can be smooth to finely wrinkled with a suede-like texture. Fruitbodies are bracket-form, broadly attached with yellow, round pores. Bright yellow-orange when young. Flesh is thick, soft and very watery when young. It becomes tough, eventually crumbling away. From Edible Wild Food
They grow on rotting wood And sometimes appearing on the ground, but there is a stump underneath! Underside showing the polypores instead of gills
