About

The birch polypore is, as its name suggests, a bracket fungus that only grows on Birch trees. It is rounded, smooth and leathery, and white or pale brown. It can be seen all year-round. Fungi belong to their own kingdom and get their nutrients and energy from organic matter, rather than photosynthesis like plants. It is often just the fruiting bodies, or 'mushrooms', that are visible to us, arising from an unseen network of tiny filaments called 'hyphae'. These fruiting bodies produce spores for reproduction, although fungi can also reproduce asexually by fragmentation.