| Spent a week in Madeira in April and despite intensive searching was unable to find a single cap or gilled fungus. I found several of the smaller bracket fungi including coriolis and bjerkandera which appear elsewhere on these pages. This was my first find, a relatively large bracket, possibly a phellinus |
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On an unidentifiable dead tree (mixed laurel and pine forest) was this "antler" or "staghorn" type fungus
which bears similarities to Ramaria fennica but then that doesn't grow on trees (or does it?).
I've tried internet searches for "madeira fungi" and failed to find a single fungi image.
I've tried many book searches and found just one book on rust fungi...not exactly what I wanted.
The fungus was finally identified by Cheryl Booker who had the inspiration to search in portuguese on google.pt
She googled "Madeira fungo" and found a
single photo
"The translation suggests that to locals it is known as mother bay (madre-louro) and its Latin name is Laurobasidium lauri."
Having extablished the Latin name she googled that in English
Laurobasidium Lauri
and Portuguese-Googled the colloquial name
Madre Louru.
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 Laurobasidium Lauri |
Heres another view. Astonishingly when we got back to our hire car which had been parked in a quiet Madeiran village (Santa da Serra) we found the car totally surrounded by a huge market and one of the stalls had a big basket of this stuff for sale so one has to presume it is edible. I decided not to risk it. |
 | and this is the last bracket, possibly a ganoderma but thats a pure guess |
 | Another view of this incredibly hard and dense fungus |