Peanut-butter Cup Fungus

Description:

One of the strangest of the cup fungi I have ever seen. Resembles a small acorn and then slowly opens up to a a slightly convex bowl that resembles wood grain in the interior. This series shows the transition to the open cup. A slight touch to the more mature opened cup sends up a powdery mass of spores. It has a tough rubbery texture, jelly like underneath with small minute stipe.

Habitat:

Saprobic on decaying hardwood sticks and logs; growing alone, gregariously, or (most often) in loose clusters; early summer and summer; apparently widely distributed east of the Rocky Mountains.

Notes:

Fruiting Body: Goblet-shaped to cup-shaped; 2-4 cm across; upper surface concave, orangish to brownish orange, bald; margin incurved, often finely toothed, fringed, or pustulate; undersurface hairy, dark brown to black, running down the pseudostem, becoming somewhat wrinkled with age; pseudostem 1-2 cm long, 3-5 mm thick, terminating in black basal mycelium; flesh gelatinous-rubbery and tough.