Jelly Rot

Jelly Rot, Phlebia tremellosa.  Bottom surface.  Keston Common, 24 December 2011.

Here's another of those small fungi that creep over rotting logs. This shows well how they can appear as a crust on the surface, and also project outwards in small fans or brackets.  You can see from my thumb that this is quite small.

The first photo shows the underside of a small bracket of this one, Jelly Rot. The intricate folded appearance clearly distinguishes this from the otherwise similar small brackets I have seen. You can compare it to the Hairy Curtain Crust I posted a while ago.  In the second photo you can see that when it grows as a crust, this is what the visible surface looks like; to form a bracket, the top of the underside grows away from the wood and becomes covered with strange hairy fingers.

You can also see in the second photo many tiny springtails. These are ubiquitous on damp rotting wood.

Jelly Rot, Phlebia tremellosa.  Crust and top surface of brackets in situ, growing on dead Silver Birch.
Keston Common, 24 December 2011.