Bracket fungus portraits

The top picture of this Trimetes versicolor shows the hairy surface of the fruiting body of this common bracket fungus. The picture below shows the underside with its pores. Inexorable is a word that could have been invented just for the fruit of bracket fungi. Whatever lightly touches them, they end up clutching, growing round, subsuming.

There is another reason for these photographs today, besides the beauty of body that has a deadly side to its hidden strength. (This fungus has killed many of the medlars here, as it has, many pome fruits, not necessarily because of pruning wounds.)

The background is the underside of a baking sheet. All true bakers have pans and sheets that make such beautiful backdrops, they could compete with the subjects if they weren't so used to being used.