I don’t usually reference Wikipedia in my blogs but I rather like their description of today’s fungus: ‘The mushroom resembles undulating waves of tightly packed corals or a loose Chinese fan.’

This is Split gill fungus (Schizophyllum commune), a species I’ve only seen once before, back in 2016, so I was both amazed and captivated when I found these growing on a huge old Oak tree in Cardiff’s Heath Park yesterday. From above, this fungus is a round hairy mass that doesn’t really look like a fungus at all. The magic happens when you look at the underside of the cap and see the stunning sculptural nature of the mushroom’s gills.