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by Michael Kuo
This odd little fungus is pretty much impossible to confuse with anything else. It is a polypore, but you will only know it after inspecting it closely, since the pore surface is cryptically covered by a flap of tissue and the fungus looks rather like a wood-rotting puffball.

Between the pore surface and the covering tissue, spores fall into a chamber and are trapped. If its spore dispersal strategy involved only the "normal" dependence on air currents, Cryptoporus volvatus might have been selected for extinction many moons ago, since the spores cannot fall free of the covering. But Cryptoporus thinks outside the box, and has ingeniously devised an alternative way to disperse spores.

As the fungus matures and spores are released, a tiny trap-door appears on the covering tissue. Wood-boring beetles, in search of food, enter the chamber to feast on the mushroom's tubes and spores--then carry the spores away. When the beetles bore into new wood, Cryptoporus spores are carried along, ready to germinate and take up residence.

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