Ganoderma     Section

This is a key to gilled mushrooms, that is, mushrooms having a definite cap with a fertile surface consisting of gills. The fruiting body usually also has a stem, although that may be lateral or absent (usually, then, the mushroom is growing from wood). You can use this key to identify mushrooms that you find.

Fertile surface usually a layer of vertical tubes, of which the mouths are visible as pores on the underside of the cap or shelf.
Fruiting bodies usually tougher or harder than the "normal" gilled mushrooms, being leathery, corky, or woody. But they can be quite tender while actively growing
Once grown, they do not decay easily, remaining on the substrate for months or years
They often grow on wood, although a few are terrestrial (even those are usually growing on buried wood)
Fruiting body is usually a flat shelf, or hoof-shaped, protruding directly from the substrate, although sometimes it may have a short stalk.
Some forms never grow away from the substrate at all, so that all that is visible of the fruiting body are the pores.
Sometimes the pores are so minute that the fertile surface seems solid, until you look closely

Growing on wood

Not fitting the other choices, fruiting body with well-developed stem

Ganoderma     Genus Either cap shiny reddish brown (as if varnished), or dull brown with a white pore surface that turns brown when scratched Cap often with a white margin. Pores minute (4-7 per mm), almost too small to see. Spores reddish-brown. Causes a white rot

Links from Look-alikes Red Cap Polypore     Subtribe Cap at least partly red, pink or red-orange Pore surface white to pale buff, but may discolor reddish

Diagnosis

• Entire cap surface (except for white margin) orange, orange-brown or reddish-brown, shiny as if varnished (reddish-brown spores may accumulate on top of the cap and partially hide this feature)
  
• Pore surface may gradually discolor with age, but not quickly upon bruising

• Species in this section are very variable in appearance, sometimes coming up on a fairly long stalk from the ground. Many times, unusual-looking individuals have been written up as new species. This is an ordinary Ganoderma lucidum with a whitish cap that will probably darken as it gets older, but this sort of clearly stipitate, apparently terrestrial Ganoderma with the pallid cap used to be called Ganoderma curtisii

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growing on hardwoods

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