Common names recorded for this fungus are “Red-brown Sapwood Rot” or “Belt
Rot”, in reference to the nature of the effect of the ravishing mycelium in the attacked
wood which finally results in soft cheesy cubes with checks and cracks filled with
white wefts of felty masses of mycelium. “Brown Cubical Rot” is the lumberman’s
term, while “punk” is the popular name for the wood at this stage of disintegration.

In an emergency the substance of the Bracket can be used for corks, razor hones,
etc. In forest fires a “punk” tree is always a source of danger by reason of its slow
burning qualities. Hence never use “rotten” wood on a camp fire, because it may
smoulder away long after it has been “‘safely” put out!

Dryad’s Saddle Ganoderma applanatum (Pers) Pat. Ganoderma = shining skin;
applanatum = flat. Type of rot—White mottled rot.

This species is easy to distinguish from other bracket fungi. In the first place it
has a characteristic chocolate brown colour; the upper surface, though much ridged
and uneven, is nevertheless smooth to the touch, looking and feeling like molten
metal that has suddenly congealed after first shrinking into a pattern of irregular
folds and corrugations. In well grown specimens it assumes a remarkably flat and
shelf-like form, marked with a series of ridges, each of which is an annual growth,
hence the age may be estimated by the number of these additions. In size the brackets
may measure from 1 to 2 feet long and 12 inches wide.

The underside is a pinkish white colour, and on close examination will be found
to contain an infinite number of small pits—each of these being the lower open end
of a spore tube.

The Dryad’s Saddle is known to gain entrance through wounds to living trees
and is therefore a serious pest of our forest trees, for, once having obtained a hold
through a wound it will spread to the living and healthy parts of the host. It is very
catholic in its tastes, being known to feed in at least 50 species of trees both deciduous
and coniferous, which include such well-known species as alder, birch, oak, apple,
aspen, cottonwood and willows, among the deciduous trees, and fir, pine, Douglas fir
and hemlock of the conifers.

As compared with some bracket fungi such as the Quinine Fungus, Fomes officinalis,
which lives to be 80 years old, the Dryad’s Saddle is short lived, about 4-10 years.
Each year a new layer of spore tubes is added so that in a cross-section of an old
specimen a number of layers of tubes appear one above the other, each separated by a
dark ligneus layer of mycelium. The tubes are long and narrow, being about 0.7 mm.
wide and up to 20 mm. long. The spores are shot off from the lining of the tubes,
and fall by gravity to the open air. If these spores should by any chance touch the
opposite side of the tube they stick there and would therefore soon block the exit for

; THE DRYAD'S SADDLE

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