The family includes those pore fungi whose fruiting bodies are tough, leathery or woody and whose pore layer usually cannot be separated easily from the context. The pores on the undersurface are only exterior openings of tubes bearing spores and in each species these tube mouths, or pores, are a definite shape and size. Occasionally pore walls will break up giving the appearance of teeth or gills. Fruiting bodies can be sessile, stemmed, effused-reflexed or resupinate (Fig . 2). Members of the family can be either perennial or annual, with the annual species growing during the summer and maturing that fall. All are typically wood-inhabiting, only rarely terrestrial. No other family of comparable size is more important economically than the Polyporaceae, causing 90 percent of the more important timber decays in the United States (Overholts 1967). Decay caused by the Polyporaceae can affect any part of the tree.https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ebooks/1007/thumbnail.jp
