Laetiporus sulphureus
English: Chicken of the wood, crab of the wood, sulphur shelf, sulphur polypore
German: Gemeiner Schwefelporling
Swedish: Svavelticka
(Photo credit: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/53713-Laetiporus-sulphureus)
As food:
- Tastes best when grown on cherry trees
- Young specimens are edible if they exude large amounts of a clear to pale yellow watery liquid. Only the young outer edges of larger specimens should be collected, as older portions tend to be tough, unpalatable, and bug-infested.
- Some people have experienced gastrointestinal upset after eating this mushroom. Severe adverse reactions can occur, including vomiting and fever, in about 10% of the population, but this is now thought to be the result of confusion with morphologically similar species such as Laetiporus huroniensis, which grows on hemlock trees, and L. gilbertsonii, which grows on Eucalyptus. Other sources say that L. sulphureus growing on conifers is more likely to cause symptoms.