Bracket fungi (and shelf fungi, Table 3) contain very high betaglucan contents. For morphological reasons, these species were not divided into stipes and caps. This group includes species from different families including Meruliaceae (Phlebia tremellosa resp. Merulius tremellosus (Schrad), Poriaceae (Piptoporus betulinus, Grifola frondosa (Dicks. ex Fr.) Gray, Laetiporus sulphureus (Bull. ex Fr.) Murr., Trametes versicolor (L.) Lloyd., Fomes fomentarius (L. ex Fr.) and Auricularicaceae (Auricularia auricula (L.)). These species are generally not cultivated for consumption and exist as saprophytes
or parasites in all of Europe and North America. Grifola frondosa is perhaps the best known species for high betaglucan content and is well known for being rich in beta-glucans and having pharmacological effectiveness. In addition, Trametes versicolor (turkey tail) has been recently reported to have high beta-glucan content. Interestingly, our results show that other species of Bracket fungi also show very high beta-glucan contents: Trametes versicolor shows an extremely high beta-glucan content with 60.79 g/100 g