King Alfred's Cakes

Description:

Ball shaped fruitbodies, roughly the size of a fist, about 8 to 10 cm across. They are pinkish-brownish coloured from the outside, and appeared firmly incrusted in these logs - at a first glance they looked like round rocks lodged in logs. They were also extremely dense, it was very difficult to cut through and get a piece for closer inspection. Inside, they present concentric layers of growth, like tree rings, tightly packed one on another, and brown - very much wood like. I guess these could be the 'brown variety', as mentioned in Wikipedia article added here as reference.

Habitat:

Members of Daldinia genus are saprophytes, important in decomposing fallen and discarded wood. Here, I found them on forest floor, on dead and decaying wood, on large trunks of fallen trees. The forest in question is a lowland broadleaved forest, mainly oak and beech, in Geneva lake valley.

Notes:

Also known as Cramp balls or Coal fungus