A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1133 entries
conk
A conk is the hard, shelf-shaped fruiting body of a bracket fungus growing out of a trunk or a stump. The visible conk is a small fraction of the organism: the working body is the mycelium threaded through the wood, and the conk is only the part that makes and releases spores. Foresters use conks as a diagnostic, since a conk on a standing tree means the interior is already being processed.
Etymology
The word is a nineteenth-century alteration of conch, the shell, which is a fair description of a hard ridged shelf stuck to the side of a trunk. It is mostly an American and Canadian forestry word; British usage says bracket. It has nothing to do with the other conk that means a nose or a blow to the head, or with a car conking out, which are separate words.