Life on the Outer Coast

It seems like every year I see several fungi that I either haven't seen or haven't noticed previously. This year has not been an exception.

One surprise was finding this salmon colored Laetiporus or Chicken of the Woods near Otter Lake (Goulding Lakes) on Chichagof Island. It was growing on half buried wood on the ground in an alluvial fan with mixed Western Hemlock and Sitka Spruce overstory and a shrub understory dominated by Early Blueberry. There were open areas on the fan with a few Red alder (many senescent) and relatively unvegetated gravel

The salmon color of this fungus was striking, almost glowing on the green background. From a distance I thought this was a Laetiporus, but was a bit more dubious after I saw the white under side. The abundant version of Laetiporus has a bright yellow under surface.

The piece I collected gradually faded to an orange color on the upper surface, but the lower surface remains white.

Arora in Mushrooms Demystified talks about a rare variety of sulphureus, semialbinus, with features that match this fungus. I'm not sure about the fate of this variety as sulphureus is no longer used for North American species.

Michael Kuo (Mushrooom Expert) has a page on a similar featured Laetiporus, cincinnatus, that occurs east of the Rockies and prefers hardwoods. I haven't found a western counterpart as yet, so I might just refer to this one as a variety of conifericola. I'm not sure that the fungus from Otter Lake wasn't growing on buried Red Alder, there were a few in the area
I did find a resource on the web; The Genus Laetiporus in North America by H. Burdsall and Mark Banik that was somewhat helpful.
The only two taxa that I saw listed with a white pore surface was Laetiporus, cincinnatus and L. gilbertsonii var. pallida. Both occur on hardwoods and southeastern Alaska seems far out of range.
I might have to post this one on Mushroom Observer to get a few more leads.