Local Name
Arq’is sok’o (1) Arq’is zok’o (khevs.), (tush.), (pshav.) (2).
Description
Bracket: The bracket is 10–20 cm across, 2–6 cm thick, subglobose at first, expanding to hoof-shaped often with a rudimentary stem, margin thick and rounded, upper surface with a thin separable skin, smooth, whitish when young darkening to fleshy grey-brown with age. Flesh: The flesh is white, rubbery. Taste slightly bitter, smell strong and pleasant. Spores: The spores are 4.5–6 X 1.3–1.5 um, cylindric to bean-shaped, colorless.
Habitat: On dry or living birch, in subalpine forests. Season: All year.
Distribution: All regions of Georgia (4).
Uses
It grows on birch and local kids make the balls from these fungi. Also, from these fungi make tinder (in Khevsureti). Non-edible (2).
Tusheti — “It grows on the birch, at first it’s a white, and then becomes darker, in my childhood they were compounding up a medicine of limbs, but I don’t remember how” (5).
References
- Nakhutsrishvili, I.G. (2007) Fungi of Georgia. Tbilisi: Buneba Printi.
- Shanidze, A. (1984) Georgian mountain dialects. Collected Works in Twelve Volumes. Vol. I. Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR. Tbilisi State University. Tbilisi: Metsniereba.
- Chincharauli, A. (2005) Khevsurian Dictionary. Tbilisi: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of Georgia.
- Nakhutsrishvili, I.G., et al. (1986) Flora of Spore-producing Plants of Georgia (Summary). Tbilisi: Metsniereba (Russian).
- Bakuradze, V. (2014) Vlg. Omalo, Tusheti.