This cool looking bowl-shaped mushroom growing in my sister’s front yard is kind of neat. It sprouted out of a buried, decaying tree stump and has been coming up every year.
Although I can’t say I’ve ever seen an example of this mushroom previously, it is reportedly common and found in practically every state East of the Rocky Mountains. Its mature fruiting bodies are shiny and reddish-brown.
Ganoderma sessile has a bright, white, outer edge while growing. This organism is a polypores – part of a group of fungi that form fruiting bodies with pores or tubes on their underside.
This genus of mushroom has long been used in traditional medicine and practitioners of Chinese medicine refer to it as the “king of herbs.”