Sulphur tuft

Description:

The cap is sulphur yellow, often tan towards the centre of the cap. It is convex or slightly umbonate, with dark velar remnants attached to the cap margin. The cap is 1 to 5 cm in diameter and the flesh is sulphur yellow and quite firm. The crowded adnate gills of the Sulphur tuft are initially sulphur yellow, becoming olive-green and progressively blackening as the spores ripen. Stems are more or less concolorous with the cap, but rather browner towards the base, 5 to 10 mm in diameter, usually curved with length 5 to 12 cm.

Habitat:

Sulphur tuft is saprobic, feeding on stumps, felled trunks and other dead wood from broad-leaf trees and less commonly conifers. If you see tufts apparently growing in grass it is a certainty that buried roots or other timber and lying just beneath the soil surface. As the root systems of many broadleaf trees extend well beyond the leaf canopy, so also the Sulphur tuft fungus can fruit quite a long way from the trunk of the decaying tree on which its mycellium is feeding.

Notes:

Young sulphur tufts spotted in Wechelerveld in rural area of Deventer, Holland. (sources:see reference)