Porcelain fungus revisited

06 Friday Nov 2026

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British fungi, fungi on Beech, Oudemansiella mucida, Porcelain Fungus

I do love it when a plan comes together.

When I visited North Cardiff’s Cefn Onn Park recently, in search of the Wood cauliflower fungus, I had quite a thorough mooch around the rest of the park. In particular, I wanted to check a huge old fallen Beech tree where I’d previously found Porcelain fungus (Oudemansiella mucida).

As you can see from the photos here, I was not disappointed. The tree and its many thick fallen branches were all oozing with this stunning fungus, from tiny round balls just appearing from cracks in the bark to large, fully formed specimens, characteristically dripping with moisture.

This is not a fungus I see very frequently and I’ve blogged about it when I have, so for snippets of information see Pretty in Porcelain, October 2025, and The fungus that looks like porcelain, October 2016.

Wood cauliflower

16 Friday Oct 2026

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#FungiFriday, British fungi, fungus, Sparassis crispa), Wood caterpillar

Firstly, I want to admit that I didn’t discover this unusual fungus unaided. The previous night I was inputting that day’s finds in to the database of my local environmental records centre when I noticed another recorder had entered this find and, never having seen it myself, I took a note of the grid reference so that I was able to plot the site on a map. The location was a park in north Cardiff where I’d previously seen some nice autumn fungi so I decided to visit the following day.

This is Wood cauliflower (Sparassis crispa), named for its rather superficial resemblance to the vegetable of the same name, though cauliflowers are produced on the stalks of plants growing in soil and this fungus grows on the roots of conifers, particularly pines. Also, though the fruiting bodies are off-white when they first emerge, they quickly turn cream like the ones I saw, and eventually rot to a brown mush.

Fortunately for the tree, the fungus is not a killer; instead, it restricts its root damage sufficiently for the tree to continue producing timber for many years – a parasite that limits its appetite to protect its food source. My guidebook tells me these cauliflowers are produced annually between July and October, and a quick look at their distribution map on iRecord shows records from throughout the UK, presumably wherever conifers will grow.

Rust: Puccinia tanaceti

09 Friday Oct 2026

Posted by sconzani in fungi, plants, wildflowers

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#FungiFriday, British rust fungi, British rusts, fungi, Puccinia tanaceti, rust fungus, rust on Tansy, Tanacetum vulgare, Tansy

I was alerted to the existence of this rust by a keen amateur naturalist I follow on social media, and I tagged their post as a reminder to look for the rust at the next opportunity. Little did I know I would find it the very next day as I walked around RSPB Lodmoor.

This is the rust fungus Puccinia tanaceti, which grows on Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) and some species of Artemisia, but, fortunately for me, is the only rust seen on Tansy. By sheer chance, there are quite a lot of Tansy plants growing alongside the footpaths that follow the outer boundary at Lodmoor, and I found the rust on the first few plants I looked at. Tansy is not so common in my part of south Wales but I will certainly be checking the plants I know about now that I’m back home again.

Fairy inkcaps

02 Friday Oct 2026

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British fungi, Coprinellus disseminatus, Fairy inkcap, fungi, fungus, inkcap fungi, inkcap mushrooms

Fungi are fabulous, and none are more fabulous than profusions of fungi like these Fairy inkcaps (Coprinellus disseminatus).

Is it any wonder the Fairy inkcap is also known as the Trooping inkcap? In Fascinated by Fungi, author Pat O’Reilly takes this alternative common name and let’s his imagination run riot with it: ‘You may think that the Terracotta Army is something special, but save your superlatives until you come across your first battalion of Fairy inkcaps swarming over a rotten hardwood stump in a sunlit woodland clearing.’

The three ‘battalions’ shown here were in different woodland locations, all found on the same day, and my photos don’t show the full extent of any of their swarms – they were extensive, and delightful to see. Their caps start off a creamy colour, as in the photo above, before turning grey as they mature (photos one and three).

Dyer’s mazegill

19 Saturday Sep 2026

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bracket fungus, British fungi, Dyer's mazegill, fungi, fungus, mazegill fungi, Phaeolus schweinitzii

Until last week, I had only seen this fungus once before, ten years ago in September 2016, in Cardiff’s Roath Park, but I’ve seen enough photos in the meantime to recognise the shape of its brackets, and the velvety surface and vibrant yellow edges of those brackets.

This is Dyer’s mazegill (Phaeolus schweinitzii), a fungus that’s a parasite on the roots of various conifer species, including pines, firs, spruces and larches. It’s usually found close to the roots of those trees but can occasionally be found on the trunks, and, as this specimen was, on the bottom of a dead, sawn-off pine stump. The fungus is present year round but is only seen when its fruiting bodies appear, between early summer and late autumn.

As to its name, I think you see from my macro photo below where the ‘mazegill’ comes from; the underside of the bracket is covered with an elaborate pattern of spore-bearing pores that resembles a labyrinth or a maze.

And ‘Dyer’s’? In his publication Fascinated by Fungi, Pat O’Reilly writes

There are records going back many centuries showing that certain [fungal] species have been used for dyeing wool and other fabrics. One of these is Phaeolus schweinitzii, whose young fruitbodies provide a bright yellow dye … Because of this use and its variable and misshapen pores, this attractive polypore is commonly known as Dyer’s mazegill.

Rust: Puccinia convolvuli

07 Friday Aug 2026

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British fungi, British rust fungi, Puccinia convolvuli, rust, rust fungus, rust on bindweed

It’s been a while since I found a new rust, or any type of fungi at all, so this one came as a nice surprise when I was checking bindweed leaves for leafmines of the tiny moth Bedellia somnulentella.

At first glance you might not realise this was a rust fungus as its effects simply looked like blotches on the upper surface of the leaf.

However, if you looked on the underside of the leaf, you could see the blotches were covered with tiny pustules, the fungus’s aecia from which spores are released.

As many rust fungi are plant specific, this was a relatively easy one to identify – it’s Puccinia convolvuli. Though I haven’t noticed it before when checking bindweed leaves, I was still surprised to learn that this is a relatively rare fungus in Britain, having only been discovered here in 2009 and not having spread far since that initial discovery. You can read more on this blog by Jeremy Bartlett, a Norfolk-based naturalist who I follow on social media.

Dead man’s fingers

03 Friday Jul 2026

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ascomycete, British fungi, Dead man's fingers, flask fungus, fungus, Xylaria polymorpha

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything fungi-related so I was quite pleased to spot these examples around a tree stump near a local railway bridge, a stump that was deliberately cut down some time ago and had poison plugs hammered into the stump to try to prevent regrowth.

The poison may have stopped the tree re-growing but it certainly hasn’t deterred the fungi. In fact, these are probably the healthiest examples of Dead man’s fingers (Xylaria polymorpha) that I’ve ever seen. I think you can see how they got their name – they really do look like blackened fingers reaching up from under the earth!

In Fascinated by Fungi, Pat O’Reilly explains that this is a species of flask fungus, a type of ascomycete that releases spores from the exterior surface of its relatively large fruiting body – another example is King Alfred’s cakes (Daldinia concentrica). The fruiting bodies of Dead man’s fingers can grow up to 8cm tall, are generally club-shaped, and grow from buried hardwood, usually Beech, though if I recall correctly, this particular stump was a Field maple.

Fan-like fungi

13 Friday Feb 2026

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British fungi, Schizophyllum commune, Split Gill, Split gill fungus

I found these Split gill fungi (Schizophyllum commune) last November but had so many other things to share at that point that these didn’t make the cut.

I’d found the same species on another tree in this Cardiff Park once before but this fallen Oak and the huge colony of Split gill fungi growing on it were more than I’d ever seen before. It’s a fungus that always intrigues me, with its bland furry upper side that gives no hint of the stunning sculptural structure beneath.

Good weather for Tripe

06 Friday Feb 2026

Posted by sconzani in fungi, winter

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Auricularia mesenterica, British fungi, Tripe, Tripe fungus, winter fungi

Mist, rain, drizzle, fog, mizzle … almost every single day this year our weather has been some variation or other of wet. Some might say this is good weather for ducks, though most of the ducks I see look as miserable in the rain as most of the people I see.

This is, however, good weather for a lot of fungi and, during a recent walk, I noticed how lush and plump this Tripe fungus (Auricularia mesenterica) was looking.

Birch polypore

30 Friday Jan 2026

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birch polypore, British fungi, fungus on Birch, Piptoporus betulinus, wood-rotting fungi

It’s been a very long time since I blogged about this fascinating fungus, Birch polypore (Piptoporus betulinus), also known as Razorstrop fungus, because, as I explained in An essential piece of traveller’s kit (8 February 2016), barbers once used the hard surface of this fungus to sharpen their cut-throat razors.

Birch polypore is a rotter, literally; its powers of decomposition are strong, mostly acting on the wood of dead Birches (Betulinus species) but, as Pat O’Reilly writes in Fascinated by Fungi, it may also ‘be parasitic on weakened birches’. I found this lovely specimen feeding on a dead Birch in a Cardiff park earlier this week.