Identification: Help me identify this weird shrub fungus

Please help me identify this strange fungus. It's on a bush outside my apartment in Washington, DC on the east coast of the United States. It pops up suddenly and comes back even if knocked off the tree. It's relatively hard and difficult to break off. Please let me know if you need any more information, and thank you for your time!

 

Interesting! It appears to be a Ganoderma or similar - a polypore fungus.
Are there any other shrubs/trees nearby - as in, is the mushroom growing from the roots of this shrub, or those of a tree nearby?
ID or general category of the trees / shrubs may be useful.

cheers,
-frog

 

It appears to be firmly attached to the root of this particular bush. I'm not sure exactly what the plant is, but the city has lined most of the streets around here with them, so I assume they're relatively hardy. They're pretty spread out - at least several feet between each plant - but none of the others have anything similar to this. The last time one sprang up on this particular bush, it stuck around for a month or so (before somebody broke it off) without sprouting any sort of mushroom top, but maybe it would have eventually?

 

I don't know this one, and it's really bothering me.

 

MycoRob: What about just an atypical growth of a hardwood-liking Ganoderma?
My current example: There's a G. oregonense up the street from me that (from conifer roots) annually fruits with predominantly abnormal shapes. Could this not be a similar situation, particularly because these specimens are small still?

 

I'd like to think it's an atypical sporocarp, but they all look identical, and I've never seen a Ganoderma like these. I request that the original poster upload these photos to mushroomobserver.org. They will identify this little guy.

added note: ok, so there is just one mushroom taken from different angles. maybe atypical sporocarp, but i'd still want it uploaded to mushroomobserver for a consensus. =)

 

Done and done! http://mushroomobserver.org/75551

 

nice! And i see it's already in the Ganoderma family.

 

Y'know, the more I look at Ganoderma host lists and fruiting body forms, the more I think I should put my nickel on G. lucidum here.

I know a nickel is a lot, but what the hey eh :-)