Coltricia cinnamomea

I was thrilled to find these delicate funnel shaped fungus, with caps ranging from 20-50mm across.  It looked like someone’s mini wood working project – and I saw one site call the Coltricia cinnamomea a fairy stool.   It has concentric rings on the cap that make it look like the iris in an eye and  some similar species are also called Tigers Eye.   It is growing where we did a controlled burn a couple of years ago and like pretty much all the fungi in our forest is inedible.  I originally thought it was a microporus xanthopus until I read that meant yellow footed and it was a tropical species.

The Mushroom Expert describes it as a beautiful little vase-shaped polypore, recognized by its silky, cinnamon cap. When fresh, the cap surface has a sheen and is delicately zoned with concentric bands of cinnamon brown. The flesh is tough and leathery, and when sliced open, is rusty brown or even orange.  Coltricia cinnamomea and the handful of other species in Coltriciaare the only polypores with central stems.

According to this site, the related Coltricia perennis is usually found on recently burned ground and is a typical “early successional species” which first come back after a forest fire.  It is hard to separate from the closely related species Coltricia cinnamomea without a microscope. Compounds extracted from this fungus have been shown to have antitumor effects. 

Rogers Mushrooms sums it up pretty well as brown with concentric bands of color; dry, velvety and shiny.