Exploration: Red Reishi or Red Belted Conk

One of the big things that I have been exploring is trying to identify a certain type of fungi. Throughout my blog, I have narrowed it down to be either a red Reishi fungi or a red belted conk fungi. In order to do this, I performed a spore print and scratch test. To do this, I started by sampling different fungi to take home and test. To perform the spore print, I made sure that the gills of the fungi were exposed and put the fungi on a white sheet of paper (gill side down), inside an airtight container and let it sit overnight. The next morning, I removed the fungi from the container to look for spore prints. The fungi is supposed to leave a white or yellow spore print if it is a red belted conk and a brown spore print if the fungi is a red reishi. When I looked in the morning, I noticed that there was brown spore prints on the sheet of paper, leading me to lean towards the fungi being a red belted conch, however some sheets also had either faint white spots or no spots visible. While I did the spore print, I also performed a scratch test. For this, I took a knife, cut into the fungi, and left scratch marks with a blade on the fungi. If bruising was present, then that meant that the fungi was a red reishi, and if no bruising developed, then that meant it was a red belted conk. When I removed the fungi samples to look at the spore prints, I also looked to see if any bruising was present around the areas where scratches were made. I found that some samples had bruising, but others didn’t, and that the ones that had bruising, were also ones with brown spore prints. This leads me to conclude that both types of fungi were present on the same tree that I have been exploring throughout the wonder blog, which helps me understand my confusion on why I was not originally able to identify that there was one or another species of fungi. This also means that multiple types of wood decay fungi can be present on the same tree, something that I did not previously know.

(Above) is a photo of all of the fungi that I sampled after they had been put into an airtight container

(Above) is an image of a red reishi fungi being inspected after a night in an airtight container. You can see the bruising present on the fungi from the scratch test, as the flesh is brown instead of white.

(Above) is another image of a fungi after being removed from its container. This fungus has no bruising present from the scratch marks, which means that this is most definitely a red belted conk fungus in this image.

(Above) is an image of the brown spore print left by this red reishi fungus. Many of the spore prints did not come out well because a lot of the samples I took had been dried out from the heat wave Winding Trails has been experiencing the past week.

(Above) is a photo of a red belted conk fungi that I decided to cut in half for fun. In this image, you can see the brown wavy like gills on the underbelly of the fungus, along with streaks across the stem leading to the middle of the fungus, which is where water and nutrients from the stem flow into the gills.

(Above) is an image of a red reishi fungi that I took a sample from

(Above) is an image of a red belted conk that I took a sample from

APA Citation

Sayner, A. (2024, April 30). A complete guide to reishi mushrooms. GroCycle. https://grocycle.com/reishi-mushrooms/#:~:text=A%20reishi%20mushroom%20will%20bruise,a%20dark%20brown%20spore%20print.

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