Common Jellyspot

Common Jellyspot (Dacrymyces stillatus) forms tiny gelatinous cushions, rarely more than a few millimetres across, dotted in profusion over wet dead wood. Individually they are easy to overlook; collectively they can turn a rain-soaked fence rail or log surface orange with hundreds of glistening spots.

Dacrymyces is the type genus of the Dacrymycetes, defined by tuning-fork basidia and by an association with brown rot of wood. The genus is notoriously difficult at species level, and D. stillatus has become something of a catch-all name in the field for small orange jelly blobs; careful separation of its relatives usually requires microscopy.

One useful trait is its readiness to fruit on worked and weathered timber. Garden fencing, gate posts, decking, stacked firewood and old plank offcuts all produce it, which makes it one of the few fungi in this guide that is more likely to be met in a back garden than in a wood.

Fruiting body

Small gelatinous cushions, discs or irregular blobs 1–5 mm across, occasionally reaching 10 mm where several coalesce. They begin rounded and become flattened, brain-like or convoluted with age, and are broadly attached to the wood without any stalk.

Surface and texture

Smooth and glistening when wet, becoming dull as the tissue dries. Texture soft and gelatinous, quickly collapsing under pressure. In dry weather the blobs shrink to hard, dark orange or almost black specks that look like flecks of resin on the wood.

Colour

Orange-yellow to deep orange when fresh, occasionally paler yellow in shade. Older material darkens towards reddish-orange or brownish, and the dried remnants are conspicuously dark.

Flesh and spore print

Flesh uniformly gelatinous, translucent, with no fibrous core, ring, volva or stipe, and no colour change on cutting. Spore print whitish to pale yellowish, though the fruiting bodies are usually too small to print easily.

Common Jellyspot grows on damp dead wood of all kinds, both conifer and broadleaved, and is equally at home on natural fallen branches and on processed timber such as fence posts, rails, decking, gates and stacked firewood. It particularly favours wood that stays wet, including shaded north faces and ground-contact ends of posts.

It can be found in every month of the year, with the greatest abundance from autumn through winter into spring when rainfall keeps the substrate saturated. The species is cosmopolitan across temperate regions worldwide and is one of the most frequently recorded fungi in many national datasets.

Dacrymyces stillatus is a saprotroph producing brown rot in dead wood, removing cellulose and hemicellulose while leaving behind a brown, crumbly, cubically cracked residue. Because it colonises small volumes of wood near the surface, its effect on structural timber is chiefly cosmetic in the short term, though it is part of the general community that weathers exposed wood over years.

Its life cycle is well suited to intermittent moisture. The blobs swell and become fertile within hours of rain, release spores, then dry into hard specks that survive weeks of drought before reviving. The species also produces asexual conidia in addition to basidiospores, which broadens its dispersal options and contributes to its very wide distribution.

Dacrymyces chrysospermus (Orange Jelly) is much larger, brain-like and typically 1–6 cm across, with a distinct whitish attachment point rooting into barkless conifer wood, whereas Common Jellyspot is millimetric and broadly attached. Other small Dacrymyces species are essentially indistinguishable without microscopy, so field records are often left at genus level.

Calocera cornea (Small Stagshorn) shares the yellow colour but forms upright, tough, spike-shaped fruiting bodies rather than flat blobs. Small orange discomycete cup fungi such as Bisporella citrina look similar from a distance but have firm, non-gelatinous flesh, a stalked disc shape with a defined rim, and grow on barkless hardwood.