What is this mushroom?

[WoodWhite]

I am stepping cautiously into the world of mushrooms, and there is a patch of small brown mushrooms packed close together, that look like a mound of hazelnuts that are in the garden, a tiny white thing in a flowerpot in the toilet, and then this bracket fungus I found up the woods, Ive got one peice that is fresh and I am about to disect, and one thats dry from last year as a bedroom decoration

But what type of mushroom is it? Go over to the gallery on the right:
http://woodwhite.moonfruit.com/#/welcome/4536384591
Thanks in advance

 

[Matthew.Passmore]

The Bracket, if I'm looking at the right picture is the Birch Polypore Piptoporus Betulinus, very common on dead/dying birch. (looks quite old)

no edible use; you can eat them when really young if you boil the hell out of them and enjoy eating rubber,

2 main uses for it would be you can cut it into a rectangular shape; dry it out and use the underside to strop your knife.

also you can cut a strip out from the underside (the spore tubes) when they are not too old and peel it off and user it as a plaster and the spores are mildly antiseptic.

 

[WoodWhite]

Cheers
..

 

[JonathanD]

They make great emergency plasters..

And after a few hours they set quite hard but still pliable. They feel much better on and less restrictive than our modern day equivalents.

 

[WoodWhite]

woh, that is cool, thanks for the plaster tip :You_Rock_