Turkey tail, also called Trametes versicolor, is a saprobic mushroom. In general, saprobic mushrooms are those that send out digestive enzymes to their sprawling fungal threads, so they can break down plant matter, poop, pine cones, fruit, houses, crops, petroleum, and more. The enzymes are even strong enough to break down lignin, the stuff that gives wood its structure. Turkey tail specifically grows abundantly throughout the world on rotting hardwood logs that have fallen in forest ecosystems. Ultimately these logs, with the help of fungi like turkey tail, get returned to the earth as future soil. 

The fruiting body of turkey tail is wavy, woody and leathery, fanning out in a shelf with various stripes of color in browns, grays, and reds. Their display ends up resembling the tail feather of a turkey, hence the name. They grow in beautiful clusters that spread horizontally across hardwood logs in deciduous woodlands.If you were to flip the fruiting body upside down, you would not see the classic gills of many mushrooms, but tiny pores upon closer examination. Turkey Tail is thus called a polypore. In these pores is where the spores, the fungi’s seed, come from.