#xylaria polymorpha

[travelling-my-little-pony]

Dr Whooves has found the fungus Dead Man's Fingers (I think - I'm certainly not an expert in identifying fungi).

At the Eden Project, in Cornwall, England.

[daily-mushroom]

Mushroom of the day

Dead Man's Fingers (Xylaria polymorpha)

Season: All year

Nutrition: Inedible, may contain harmful toxins

"What we can see is not the fruit body of the species, but a communal fruit body (called stroma). It hosts hundreds of individual fruit bodies. It is initially off white to greyish, covered with fine grey dust (conidia), turning dark brown to almost black with maturation. The stroma‘s surface is covered with tiny pores (the mouth/exit of individual, flask-shaped fruit bodies, called perithecia) which cannot be detected by the naked eye. "

images: 1. nature_treasure_hunter on inaturalist, 2. New Hampshire Garden Solutions

[cyhyraethofnightmists]

Dead Man's Fingers (Xylaria polymorpha) growing in the yard!

[wildspores]

Xylaria polymorpha

Photo by S. Kaschabek

Vielgestaltige Holzkeule

Dead Man‘s Fingers

[mushroom-showdown]

Death Cap vs. Xylaria Polymorpha

Death Cap

Xylaria Polymorpha

Voting ended onFeb 20, 2023

[punkedsolar]

Funguary Feb 12 - Demonic Dead Man's Fingers - Xylaria Polymorpha

Dead man's fingers is a saprobic fungus with geographic distribution across all six inhabited continents. The Dead Man's Deer is a ruminant artiodactyl who's inclusion in the clade is subject to much debate. While the structure of it's feet resemble various antelope subspecies, and the horns most certainly do (they are not antlers), the fact that it has a varying number of legs has perplexed taxonomists for years.

But only those researchers that can outdistance it. While many bovidae will consume meat occasionally, the Dead Man's Deer is unusual in that it is carnivorous in reproduction. It chases and consumes herbivores, adding them gradually to it's organ-less body. Eventually enough portions will be colonised by the blue emanations that they can slough off and create a new Dead Man's Deer.

[devi-town]

Fungus women. (Mycena subcyanocephala, Xylaria polymorpha)

[blackswallowtailbutterfly]

Coral and Finger Mushrooms

Don't have a lot of photos of these, but they're neat. Photos mine, unedited.

Artomyces pyxidatus, the crown-tipped coral mushroom, is edible and a neat texture in soup.

Clavaria fragilis, fairy fingers, are also edible but I didn't know what it was at the time of the photos and so haven't used them yet.

Clavaria zollingeri, violet coral, is edible as well, but I didn't know what this was at the time either and haven't seen it since.

Xylaria polymorpha, dead man's fingers, are great in frittata! This is the stage you want them in. I really should photos of a full flush, but I always get excited when they come up and start picking. lol You can see the stumps of some I grabbed.

Word of caution: cook all wild edible mushrooms before eating. Even if they don't poison you immediately they can have longterm effects.

Word of ethics: leave a third of the young ones you find in the wild and only if there are a lot of them.