Weird fungus - bright orange. What is it?

[conuly]

It was growing on our nearly-dead tree outside my window. I couldn't get a good picture of it, but the limb fell down recently (honestly, the best thing to do would be to chop down the whole tree now, but nobody listens when I say that) so I went up and took two pictures, one of the underside and one of the... uh... otherside.

Comments

[velvetchamber.livejournal.com]

I don't think it is in any way very unusual, but it does have a strong colour, which makes it easy to look for by flipping through pages, and then it is a shelf fungus, and many of them have a tendency to hang around for years, so they get noticed and put in books, they also have different growth patterns, so that probably makes it possible for you to pick this particular one from other possibilities of similarly coloured shelf fungi. I'd guess it's really just the question of fliping though the book looking for colours, and putting in a slip if you find one that's shelf shaped, and then comparing the pictures and description to the real thing.