My Fungi 2025 photo album begins with a most glorious find! The scarlet elf cup (Sarcoscypha austriaca), in an area of secondary woodland at the edge of Holly Hayes Wood, Coalville.
Growing on the decaying, half buried remains of fallen hardwood set in moss and leaf litter, this member of the "ascomycetes - the spore shooters" is what is referred to as a saprotroph...a consumer of dead wood.
An important decomposer, they release nutrients from woody debris in early spring, providing fuel for early spring plants.
The ruby scattering of this denizen of spring around the floor of a still colourless wood reminds us of the importance of this part of the woodland ecosystem.
They appear in late winter and early spring and form an important food source for rodents.
There must be an evolutionary reason behind how visible they are and I can only imagine they are advertising themselves to the rodents, who may help them spread spores as they carry the fruiting bodies off to their cache sites.
There were tons of them here and indeed they are known to occur in greater local abundance in the west.
Returning to their ascomycete ways, if you blow on one at a later stage of development the temperature change will provoke it to shoot a cloud of spores into the air!
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