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This bright yellow-orange fungus branches like a small set of antlers, which gives it its common name. It is a jelly fungus, tough and rubbery rather than brittle, and slightly sticky when wet, as its species name, viscosa, suggests. It grows on rotting conifer wood, usually stumps and buried roots, so it often appears to sprout straight from the ground. It fruits mainly from late summer to early winter.
Yellow stagshorn is a brown-rot fungus. It breaks down the cellulose in wood but leaves much of the tougher lignin behind as a brown, crumbly residue. This residue breaks down slowly and adds long-lasting organic matter to the soil.
Conifers had a direct link to the pits: much of the timber used for pit props was pine and larch, and wartime shortages of pit props helped lead to the founding of the Forestry Commission in 1919.
They also tell a more complicated story. When colliery sites were reclaimed, fast-growing conifers were often planted because they could cope with poor, acidic spoil and green the land quickly. Alongside the levelling of spoil heaps and the clearing of pit buildings, they also hid much of the visible evidence of the industry that shaped these places and their communities. Now, rising like small golden antlers from fallen conifer wood, fungi like this one are breaking down the remains of that first planting.
This bright yellow-orange fungus branches like a small set of antlers, which gives it its common name. It is a jelly fungus, tough and rubbery rather than brittle, and slightly sticky when wet, as its species name, viscosa, suggests. It grows on rotting conifer wood, usually stumps and buried roots, so it often appears to sprout straight from the ground. It fruits mainly from late summer to early winter.
Yellow stagshorn is a brown-rot fungus. It breaks down the cellulose in wood but leaves much of the tougher lignin behind as a brown, crumbly residue. This residue breaks down slowly and adds long-lasting organic matter to the soil.
Conifers had a direct link to the pits: much of the timber used for pit props was pine and larch, and wartime shortages of pit props helped lead to the founding of the Forestry Commission in 1919.
They also tell a more complicated story. When colliery sites were reclaimed, fast-growing conifers were often planted because they could cope with poor, acidic spoil and green the land quickly. Alongside the levelling of spoil heaps and the clearing of pit buildings, they also hid much of the visible evidence of the industry that shaped these places and their communities. Now, rising like small golden antlers from fallen conifer wood, fungi like this one are breaking down the remains of that first planting.