Bracket Fungi, Polyporales, are Basidiomycote Fungi that predominantly grow on dead, rotting, wood, though some species are significant pathogens of trees and woody plants. They produce distinctive fruiting bodies on the outside of the wood, which are shelf or bracket shaped with the spore-producing basidia on the underside. Bracket fungi found in commercial woodlands and those which attack structural timber have been well studied, but the group is know to be much more diverse in old-growth woodland, where it has been little studied.
In a paper published in the journal Phytotaxa on 14 April 2016, Chang-Lin Zhao, Feng Xu and Donald Pfister of the Farlow Herbarium of Cryptogamic Botany at Harvard University describe a new species of Bracket Fungus from Lakeshore Nature Reserve in Dane County, Wisconsin.
The new species is placed in the genus Truncospora and given the specific name wisconsinensis, meaning 'from Wisconsin'. The Fungus was found growing on fallen Oak trees, where it produces white fruiting bodies. A genomic phylogenetic analyses suggests that this species is closely related to two other North American Bracket Fungi, Truncospora ohiensis and Truncospora arizonica.
Fruiting body of Truncospora wisconsinensis. Scale bar is 1 cm. Zhao et al. (2016).
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