The =pileus= is wood brown to fawn, clay color or isabelline color. It is nearly semi-circular to reniform in outline, and the margin broadly crenate, or sometimes lobed. The stem is attached at the concave margin, where the cap is auriculate and has a prominent boss or elevation, and bent at right angles with a characteristic curve. The pileus is firm, flexible, tough and fibrous, flesh white. The surface is covered with a fine and dense tomentum. The pileus is 5--8 mm. thick at the base, thinning out toward the margin. The =tubes= are whitish, 2--3 mm. long and 5--6 in the space of a millimeter. They are very slender, tubular, the mouth somewhat enlarged, the margin of the tubes pale cream color and minutely mealy or furfuraceous, with numerous irregular, roughened threads. The tubes often stand somewhat separated, areas being undeveloped or younger, so that the surface of the under side is not regular. The tubes are not so crowded as is usual in the _Fistulina hepatica_. They are not decurrent, but end abruptly near the stem. The =spores= are subglobose, 3 µ in diameter. The stem tapers downward, is whitish below, and near the pileus the color changes rather abruptly to the same tint as the pileus. The stem is sometimes branched, and two or three caps present, or the caps themselves may be joined, as well as the stems, so that occasionally very irregular forms are developed, but there is always the peculiar character of the attachment of the stem to the side of the cap. Figure 180 is from plants (No 3676, C. U. herbarium) collected at Blowing Rock, N. C., September, 1899. Figures on the colored plate represent this plant. =Polyporus frondosus= Fr. =Edible.=--This plant occurs in both Europe and America, and while not very common seems to be widely distributed. It grows about old stumps or dead trees, from roots, often arising from the roots below the surface of the ground, and also is found on logs. The plant represents a section of the genus _Polyporus_, in which the body, both the stem and the cap, are very much branched. In this species the stem is stout at the base, but it branches into numerous smaller trunks, which continue to branch until finally the branches terminate in the expanded and leaf-like caps as shown in Figs. 181--182. The plants appear usually during late summer and in the autumn. The species is often found about oak stumps. Some of the specimens are very large, and weigh 10 to 20 pounds, and the mass is sometimes 30 to 60 cm. (1--2 feet) in diameter.