Tag Archives: British fungi

Rust: Puccinia convolvuli

07 Friday Aug 2026

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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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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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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

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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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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.

Candlesnuff

16 Friday Jan 2026

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A simple scene from the woodland floor is the subject of today’s post, a miniature landscape painted by Nature of a sheltered spot where the fallen leaves haven’t yet disintegrated into mush and the tiny black-and-white fingers of Candlesnuff fungi have emerged from a small branch to reach up as far as they can so that their spores can be dispersed amongst the trees. It’s a scene we have probably all walked past and ignored, and yet it’s really quite beautiful if we take the time to look.

E is for earthstar, the eponymous fungus

10 Wednesday Dec 2025

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I just checked – I haven’t posted any photos of earthstars since December 2023. As they were the inspiration for the name of this blog (though the name is also meant to encompass all the flora and fauna that are the environmental stars on this amazing Earth), I really think they should feature here at least once a year.

These particular Collared earthstars (Geastrum triplex) were photographed in both the old and new sections of Cardiff’s Cathays Cemetery last week.

Tripe, but you wouldn’t want to eat it

05 Friday Dec 2025

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In fact, you probably wouldn’t want to eat the other form of tripe, the stomach lining of cows, pigs and sheep, either, unless you were desperate, and definitely not if, like me, you’re a vegetarian.

I’ve only ever seen Tripe fungus (Auricularia mesenterica) in a couple of different places before today, so it was good to add a new site to my list.

There’s one particular location I know, where the fungus can be seen year round on the stump of a long dead Elm tree, in summer looking just like a grouping of dried, shrivelled brackets but, in winter, when they’ve rehydrated, plump and hairy like these ones I found today.

The various species of Elm are where Tripe grows most commonly and, though today’s new location was a large fallen tree trunk that could have been any species of tree, I had previously found Wrinkled peach growing on it, another Elm-specific fungus.

Oak mazegill

21 Friday Nov 2025

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I’m sure I must have seen these stunning bracket fungi, Oak mazegill (Daedalea quercina), before this week but I have no images of them on my laptop. Growing on a huge old fallen Oak – they always grow on Oak (i.e. Quercus species), hence the quercina epithet, consuming dead fallen and still standing trees and large branches, these brackets grow annually, eventually reaching a thickness of 10cm and a diameter of 20cm. And, as you can see from my photos, the fertile surface (i.e. the underside of the bracket, from which the spores are released) has maze-like channels, which explains the mazegill name.

Pat O’Reilly, in his book Fascinated by Fungi, explains that its generic name (Daedalea) refers to Daedalus, the legendary figure who supposedly designed the maze on ancient Crete, in which Pasiphaë, wife of King Minos, hid her offspring the Minotaur, half man and half bull.

O’Reilly’s book also includes a couple of other fascinating facts about Oak mazegill:

This fungus was valued by beekeepers who used the smoke from smouldering fruitbodies to anaesthetise bees. Once the bees had been calmed by the dense smoke, the beekeeper could open a hive and work on it without triggering painful panic reactions by the occupants.

The deep, hard-wearing channels make these tough and durable brackets very handy as combs for grooming horses – one of their traditional uses.