Hypholoma fasciculare - Sulphur Tuft

Taxonomy

Phylum: Basidiomycota

Class: Agaricomycetes

Order: Agaricales

From April through to the first heavy frosts, a walk in mixed woodland rarely fails to reveal Sulphur Tufts fruiting on fallen trees, decaying stumps or, occasionally, hollow trunks of living trees.

Very variable in cap size, the Sulphur Tuft fungus, Hypholoma fasciculare, is inedible, with a very bitter taste. This wood-rotting fungus is not a fussy feeded: it tackles deciduous hardwoods as well as conifers apparently with equal enthusiasm.

The specific epithet comes from the Latin word fasces, which means bundles or tufts - a characteristic of the fruitbodies of this saprobic fungus.

Identification Guide

	Cap Sulphur yellow, often tan towards the centre of the cap; convex or slightly umbonate, with dark velar remnants attached to the cap margin. 2 to 7cm in diameter. The cap flesh is sulphur yellow and quite firm.
	Gills The crowded adnate gills are initially sulphur yellow, becoming olive-green and progressively blackening as the spores ripen.
	Stem More or less concolorous with the cap, but browner towards the base; 5 to 10 mm in diameter, usually curved with length 5 to 12cm.
Spore print	Purplish-brown.
Odour/taste	No distinctive odour, bitter taste. (Inedible, and capable of causing very unpleasant stomach upsets.)
Habitat	On stumps, felled trunks and other dead wood from conifers and from broad-leaf trees.
Season	All through the year, but most abundant from June to November.
Occurrence	Very common
Similar species	Hypholoma lateritium, the Brick Tuft, is typically redder with yellow gills (rather than olive-green) that eventually become olivaceous-brown. Hypholoma capnoides, Conifer Tuft, has pale grey gills with no hint of green.