Habitat & season
A year-round tree-spotting project
Chaga is recorded in BC and can be visible year-round. This guide focuses on its irregular black growth on living birch. Other hosts occur, so birch is a starting point, not an exclusive rule.
Identification features
Look at the growth
The familiar black growth is a sterile mass, distinct from the fungus's spore-producing structure.
JBouchez · CC-BY-SA-4.0 · Credits
Black, cracked exterior
The hard surface resembles charcoal, with deep cracks and an irregular outline.
Rusty orange-brown inside
The interior is woody and orange-brown. Observe it only where it is already exposed. Colour alone cannot identify chaga.
Get to know paper birch
Look for thin, papery peeling bark with dark horizontal slits. Leaves are triangular to egg-shaped, with small teeth along larger teeth. Pale bark alone is not enough: aspen also has pale bark. Not every birch has paper-birch bark.
Leave the tree intact. Record an unseen interior or uncertain host as unknown.
Compare carefully
What could fool you?
A black lump on a tree is not enough. Compare the growth's structure and the tree as well as its colour.
A tree burl
A swelling of the tree's own wood, usually covered by bark. Here, bark continues across the swelling. Compare this with chaga's projecting, charcoal-like crust.
W.carter · CC0-1.0 · Credits
A bracket fungus
Brackets form shelves or hoof-like caps, often with pores underneath. The layered upper surface is visible here. Chaga's black mass lacks that organised cap and pore-bearing underside.
Tomas Čekanavičius · CC-BY-SA-3.0 · Credits
Old brackets can darken. Damaged bark and other fungal growths can also confuse. These examples do not cover every possibility.
Photos show reference specimens from the locations captioned, not a complete set of BC species. Colours vary; use several features together.
Keep learning
Record what you can see.
Photograph the whole tree, bark, attached leaves or visible twigs, and the growth from several angles. Include any already-exposed interior. Use zoom from the ground. Record date, location and approximate size.
Learn with iNaturalist
Share photos, date and location on iNaturalist for community ID help. Mycologists use it to document fungi and their distribution. "Research Grade" reflects community agreement and data quality, not a check that something is safe to eat.
Take it with you
Your free chaga guide.
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Reading PDFFour portrait pages, in reading orderPrint-and-fold PDFTwo landscape Letter sides, ready to foldPrint at 100%, double-sided, flip on the short edge. Turn off booklet mode. Fold the left half behind the right half.
Printing instructions, sources and creditsSources & credits
The guide is identification-only and is not clearance to eat a wild find.
Photographs
David McCorquodale · Inonotus obliquus (Nova Scotia, Canada).jpg
© David McCorquodale, 'Inonotus obliquus (Nova Scotia, Canada).jpg', via Wikimedia Commons and iNaturalist, CC BY 4.0. Resized; uncropped; original copyright notice retained. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inonotus_obliquus_(Nova_Scotia,_Canada).jpg. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Wikimedia proportional resize from 2048 x 1365 to 1280 x 853. No crop or local pixel editing. Embedded photographer copyright notice retained at lower left. No further edits in this web adaptation.
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JBouchez · Chaga (Inonotus obliquus) de 4,2 kg.jpg
JBouchez, 'Chaga (Inonotus obliquus) de 4,2 kg.jpg', Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized; uncropped. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chaga_(Inonotus_obliquus)_de_4,2_kg.jpg. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.
Wikimedia proportional resize from 4348 x 3448 to 1920 x 1523. No crop or local pixel editing. Numbered HTML markers added for this web adaptation. The annotated presentation retains the photograph's ShareAlike licence.
_de_4,2_kg.jpg){kind=link}
W.carter · Burr on a birch 3.jpg
W.carter, 'Burr on a birch 3.jpg', Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0. Resized and cropped to the burl and adjoining trunk. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Burr_on_a_birch_3.jpg. Dedication: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/.
Wikimedia proportional resize to 1920 x 2564, followed by a local rectangular crop in that thumbnail's coordinates. Saved with Pillow 10.2.0 as JPEG, quality 92, subsampling 0, optimize true. No colour, contrast, sharpening, rotation or retouching operations. The earlier uncropped download was replaced by this crop. No further edits in this web adaptation.
Tomas Čekanavičius · Fomes fomentarius 1.jpg
Tomas Čekanavičius, Tocekas, 'Fomes fomentarius 1.jpg', Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. Unmodified. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fomes_fomentarius_1.jpg. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/.
None. Original Commons JPEG, byte-for-byte. No further edits in this web adaptation.
Photograph licences apply to the images and their adaptations, not to the Wildcraft Foods logo or independent layout.