The type specimen was found growing on charred wood in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania).

and sent to Berkeley through botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker, who was sent the specimens from collections made by Ronald Campbell Gunn.

Mycologists have juggled the fungus to several different polypore genera in its taxonomic history: Mordecai Cubitt Cooke to genus Polystictus in 1886;[3] Otto Kuntze to Microporus in 1898;[4] Curtis Gates Lloyd to Trametes in 1915;[5] and Jorge Eduardo Wright and J.R.Deschamps to Fomitopsis in 1975.

[7] The fungus produces shelf-like fruit bodies, usually 3–10 cm (1–4 in) in diameter, attached directly to the substrate without a stipe.

[10] Although not native to Europe, it was reported as an exotic species growing on imported eucalyptus wood sheet piling in a new housing estate in Groningen.