Otidea bufonia - Toad's Ear

Taxonomy

Class: Pezizomycetes

Order: Pezizales

Family: Pyronemataceae

An infrequent and easily overlooked species, Toad’s Ear is most often found on forestry roads and paths, where all too often it blends in with bark chippings or dark humus-rich soil.

There is something special about footpaths through woods that suits these and other ear- and cup-like fungi - perhaps it is the disturbance, or maybe the change in soil density due to compaction, that causes them to fruit most often right on the edges of such well-trodden tracks.

Identification Guide

Description	Elongated cup with a split down the shorter side and edges overlapping rather than merely abutting; inner surface smooth, dark brown; outer surface mid brown and scurfy; 3 to 6cm tall and 1.5 to 4cm across; thick brown stem up to 1cm long.
Spore print	White.
Odour/taste	Not distinctive
Habitat	In mossy woodlands and woodland edges; often beside and sometimes of forestry tracks.
Season	June to early November.
Occurrence	Frequent.
Similar species	Otidea onotica is a much paler orange-brown ear fungus and usually produces smaller cups.

Reference Sources

Fascinated by Fungi, Pat O'Reilly 2011.

Dennis, R.W.G. (1981). British Ascomycetes; Lubrecht & Cramer; ISBN: 3768205525.

Dictionary of the Fungi; Paul M. Kirk, Paul F. Cannon, David W. Minter and J. A. Stalpers; CABI, 2008

Taxonomic history and synonym information on these pages is drawn from many sources but in particular from the British Mycological Society's GB Checklist of Fungi and (for basidiomycetes) on Kew's Checklist of the British & Irish Basidiomycota.