I was fascinated by some fungus I found in the front garden yesterday, it was like plump fingers growing out of the soil at the base of a shrub called Escallonia.
The finger like projections were black and growing in a semi circular clump around the base of a thick dead "trunk", I had never seen anything like it before, and the thought it looks like dead men's fingers crossed my mind.
Looking it up I did find it is indeed known as Dead Men's Fingers or more correctly Xylaria Polymorpha it is found usually on beechwood stumps but may also be found on other broad leaved hardwoods. This was interesting to me as the shrub I found it on had small elliptical leaves and although it is a broad leaved shrub I had never thought of it as such (until I looked it up!).
My Escallonia is very old, it was planted in the early 1970's, there are several of these shrubs and they are part of the boundary hedge, which has really outgrown itself. I had decided it needed some hard pruning and we were cutting it back to six feet, which meant lopping off up to fifteen feet of mainly bare wood, the top few feet was still very beautiful being densely covered in both leaves and pretty flowers so I decided to try regenerating the plant by this hard pruning.
The ground underneath appeared to be very dry despite the extremely wet summer, ivy has grown all along the ground at the base of this hedge and we will remove this, I used to have hardy geraniums growing all along the outer edge but I have only two left now as I caught a cheeky man complete with gardening fork digging them up! He had the nerve to tell me he and his wife always admired them and he decided to get them for their own garden, telling me they were only wayfaring plants. I explained they were plants I had bought and put in, off he went with his wife and most of my plants. I decided not to replace them, however time has passed and I have now decided they will be replaced. I have some in the garden and will divide them to make new plants.
While looking up xylaria polymorpha (dead man's fingers) I was interested to read there is another fungus called xylaria longipes which is found exclusively on sycamores and is commonly known as dead moll's fingers!
Further investigation showed xylaria carpophila to be found on rotting beech mast and xylaria hypoxylon which is known as stags horn or candlestick fungus, and is found on rotting fallen branches and stumps of broad leaved trees. It is also found very occasionally on pine stumps.
I shall be looking out for these other types.
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