Strange Fungi

It’s difficult to tell from your photo what we are looking at. I think it’s something growing on a tree trunk. I can’t see any familiar structures, so it’s possible that it’s too old to tell. Adding close-ups is a good idea.

Hi Josie,

it does look a little bit like a rather old cluster of Alder Bracket, Mensularia radiata, but I can’t really be sure. Worth going back for another look? That would be my best bet anyway. All the best with finding interesting fungi!

I will try to attach a picture of what I think is an even older cluster to compare with, found on a dead standing trunk of an Alder in a wet part of my local woods, almost on the side of a stream. It is only an annual fruiting body in this species, that seems to go past its best quite quickly, so I think we often see it senescent and way past its best.

There would be little to see in a close-up of my picture either, as all that is left is some of the hardened and blackened caps, with some of the hardened dried out redder flesh as a matrix that the caps stick out of, but I think that there are enough features, together with knowing that the host tree is a Common Alder, to take a fair guess at its identity.

I would agree that it is a bit too “reflexed” (sticking out as a cap, as opposed to just being a flattened crust on the bark), to be likely to be Fuscoporia, known as Cinnamon or Rusty Porecrust..

Cheers, David.

[attachment=0]IMG Alder Bracket, Mensularia radiata possibly , Dene Park, Hadlow, 2022 03 25 _ 17 24 15.jpg[/attachment]