Witch butter, Yellow brain fungus
Yellow brain fungus is a common fungus that
lives on the bark of deciduous trees.
It is there all year but especially during the
fall remarkably.
This fungus is parasitic on other fungi which
feed themselves with dead wood.
Witch butter in the winter.
A photo of Natalie Overkamp, info@zebrablauw.nl
Witch butter in different shapes and color
Witch butter comes in different colors, darker wenn dried out,
sometimes more orange.
Yellow brain and other lichen
The dog vomit slime mold or scrambled egg slime is
sometimes confused with witch butter, but has
another aspect and also leaves a trail.
(The dog vomit slime mold moves like a snail!)
the colorless Tremella Fungus
There is also a colorless form of the yellow brain fungus.
which looks like milky glass.
Gorse and the yellow brain fungus
The vibrating yellow fungus is often seen on a Gorse.
basidiomycota
Basidiomycota are filamentous fungi composed of hyphae ,
and reproducing sexually via the formation of specialized
club-shaped end cells called basidia that normally bear
external meiospores. But there are many execeptions on this rule.
The lamel is the place to find spores,(also called meiospores or basidiospores).
These spores are disperred by the wind. If they find a good substrate they will form hypae,
to make (sexually) contact with the spore of a neighbour.
1two haploid cells fuse.
2meiose creates four haploid cells.
3these cells move to the outside of the basidia
4they form the spores (basidiospores).
5These (basidio)spores ae transported through the air
6After they landed on a good substrate, the spores form hyphae to make contact with other spores.
7The spores fuse to form a new cell with two nuclei.
A new fungus starts to grow.