The northern red belt is one of the most common shelf fungi on dead conifers in the forest. Its woody conks start as rounded knobs and grow into thick shelves or hooves several inches across. The top is banded: a varnished-looking orange to red zone near the edge, darker red-brown to gray toward the tree, and a thick white to pale yellow rim where new growth is added.
It is perennial, so a single conk can keep growing for years. Underneath is a pale surface of tiny pores that slowly bruise yellowish to brown. Fresh conks have a strong, pleasant smell.
This fungus lives mostly on dead wood, including standing dead trees and dead parts of living trees, and sometimes attacks living trees. It causes a brown cubical rot, leaving the wood brown and cracked into small cubes. In the advanced stages it forms thick mats of fungal threads in the cracks. As a decomposer it helps turn dead trees back into forest soil.
Until recently this fungus went by the name Fomitopsis pinicola. DNA studies published in 2016 and 2019 split North America’s red belts into several species and showed that the true F. pinicola lives only in Eurasia.
How to identify it
A woody, perennial conk about 3 to 9 inches across, semicircular to hoof-shaped, with an orange to red varnished band near the margin, darker red-brown to gray toward the attachment and a thick white to yellowish rim. The underside is whitish to pale yellow with tiny pores that slowly bruise yellowish to brown. Flesh is cream colored and tough.
Look-alikes
Fomitopsis ochracea is similar but lacks red tones on the cap. Reddish Ganoderma conks can look alike but have brown flesh. Where its range meets the southern Fomitopsis schrenkii, the two may need DNA to tell apart.
Habitat
Dead and dying conifers, and sometimes hardwoods, standing or fallen, in forests across North America mostly north of about the 40th parallel.
Sightings in the forest
282 research-grade sightings in Mt. Hood National Forest on iNaturalist, most recently on November 3, 2026. See them on iNaturalist →