If you don't know what it is ...

Witches' Butter, Exidia glandulosa.  Fungus.  Hayes Common, 23 December 2011.

If you see something growing in the woods, but you don't know what it is, there's a good chance it's a fungus. Here are a few unlikely lifeforms I saw over the Christmas period.

The first photo is of some small black gelatinous blobs that were growing along the length of a fallen twig. These are called Witches' Butter, and it's clear that witches get a bad press amongst the namers of outdoor phenomena. I recently heard that little plastic bags of dog faeces left hanging on fences are being called Witches' Knickers.

Next is something I mentioned in a recent post; it looked like a yellow jelly bowl full of wood ash. In fact, at first I wondered if someone had tried to burn it. But no; it's a Commmon Earth Ball.  I approached it with some caution.

Common Earth Ball, Scleroderma citrinum. Keston Common, 24 December 2011.

The outside has patches of green algae, and the ashy substance, of which there was lots, is its spores. I had no idea at all what this was, and had to be told.

The last one for this post looks as though someone has splashed white paint on a piece of standing deadwood.

Elder Whitewash, Hyphodontia sambuci. Hayes Common, 25 December 2011.

It's another fungus, called Elder Whitewash. The wood is a dead section of an Elder, Sambucus nigra, a shrub that produces flowers and berries that both make tasty wine.