chicken of the woods

noun phrase

variants or chicken-of-the-woods

: an edible bracket fungus (Laetiporus sulphureus) of North America and Europe that forms thick, fleshy, shelflike fruiting bodies (as on tree trunks) which are usually bright orange above and sulfur yellow below

Realistically, however, a 56-pound chicken of the woods is old and tough. The fungus is only appetizing when it is young and tender, but even then, it is usually big.

—Nina Rao

I've eaten chicken-of-the-woods, a bright orange fungus I knocked off a rotting log.

—Tina Kelley

called also chicken mushroom, sulfur shelf

Examples of chicken of the woods in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Some of the more popular edible foraging finds in the state include chicken of the woods, fiddleheads, stinging nettle, wild garlic, garlic mustard, Japanese knotweed, Morel mushrooms, huckleberry, elderberry, wild raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and apples. —Stephen Underwood, Hartford Courant, 29 Apr. 2025

Frances watches Marshall, in an old YouTube video, point out that what look like individual growths of chicken of the woods mushrooms are actually connected. —Angie Han, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 Sep. 2019

Word History

First Known Use

1960, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for chicken of the woods

• backwoods
• childhoods
• falsehoods
• flatwoods
• hardwoods
• priesthoods
• redwoods
• softwoods
• brotherhoods
• cottonwoods
• likelihoods
• livelihoods