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Phellinus pomaceus
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Fungi
Division: Basidiomycota
Class: Agaricomycetes
Order: Hymenochaetales
Family: Hymenochaetaceae
Genus: Phellinus
Quél. (1886)
Type species
Phellinus igniarius
(L.) Quél. (1886)

Species include:

Phellinus is a genus of fungi in the family Hymenochaetaceae. Many species cause white rot. Fruiting bodies, which are found growing on wood, are resupinate, sessile, and perennial. The flesh is tough and woody or cork-like, and brown in color. Clamp connections are absent, and the skeletal hyphae are yellowish-brown.[1]

The name Phellinus means cork.[2]

The species Phellinus ellipsoideus (previously Fomitiporia ellipsoidea) produced the largest ever fungal fruit body.[3][4]

Phellinus produces the natural phenol hispidin.[5]


In Australia, Aborigines have used Phellinus fruiting bodies medicinally. The smoke from burning fruit bodies was inhaled by those with sore throats. Scrapings from slightly charred fruiting bodies were drunk with water to treat coughing, sore throats, "bad chests", fevers and diarrhoea. Unfortunately there is some uncertainty about which species of Phellinus were used. [6]


  1. ^ Ellis, J. B.; Ellis, Martin B. (1990). Fungi without gills (hymenomycetes and gasteromycetes): an identification handbook. London: Chapman and Hall. ISBN 0-412-36970-2. 
  2. ^ Healing Mushrooms By Georges M. Halpern
  3. ^ Cui, Bao-Kai; Decock, Cony (2013). "Phellinus castanopsidis sp. nov. (Hymenochaetaceae) from southern China, with preliminary phylogeny based on rDNA sequences". Mycological Progress 12 (2): 341–351. doi:10.1007/s11557-012-0839-5. 
  4. ^ Cui, Bao-Kai; Dai, Yu-Cheng (2011). "Fomitiporia ellipsoidea has the largest fruiting body among the fungi". Fungal Biology 115 (9): 813–4. doi:10.1016/j.funbio.2011.06.008. PMID 21872178. 
  5. ^ Highly oxygenated and unsaturated metabolites providing a diversity of hispidin class antioxidants in the medicinal mushrooms Inonotus and Phellinus. In-Kyoung Lee and Bong-Sik Yu, Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Volume 15, Issue 10, 15 May 2007, pp. 3309-3314, doi:10.1016/j.bmc.2007.03.039
  6. ^ Arpad Kalotas (1996). Fungi of Australia, Volume 1B.

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