A big Missouri mushroom

This mushroom is common throughout Missouri. Growing from a single base, it appears as several small mushrooms growing on and about one another. To me it looks like a pile of discarded, misshapen pancakes. Someone years ago looked at the mushroom and was reminded of a chicken with ruffled feathers -- thus the name hen of the woods.

A hen of the woods often grows at the base of a large oak tree with the fungus attaching to the tree's root. Year after year the hen of the woods may reappear under the same tree. The fungus will cause decay to the tree root and in time will help lead to the demise of the tree. Finding a hen of the woods growing under an old oak tree in your yard may be a signal your tree could be in the last years of life.

I took this photo in Cape Girardeau County near a church where someone had left a garden hose, which the mushroom claimed. I took off my shoe to photograph it next to the hen to show scale. I measured the mushroom at 32 inches. The big mushroom is growing near the base of a large red oak tree I estimated to be at least 150 years old.

Through the Woods is a weekly nature photo column by Aaron Horrell. Find this column at semissourian.com to order a reprint of the photo. Find more work by him at the Painted Wren Gallery.