Crested Coral
Clavulina coralloides
Also called white coral, crested coral fungus, crested clavulina
A small white coral fungus whose branch tips split into fine crests like miniature antlers. It grows from woodland soil and is often blackened at the base by a parasitic fungus.
Overview
Crested Coral, long known as Clavulina cristata, is one of the commonest small branched fungi of temperate woodland. Clusters are typically 2-8 cm tall, white to cream, and end in a distinctive fringe of finely divided, crested or antler-like tips that give the species its name.
Clavulina belongs to the Clavulinaceae in the Cantharellales, placing it closer to chanterelles and hedgehog fungi than to the Ramaria corals it superficially resembles. That relationship is reflected in its white spore print and its basidia, which bear only two spores each rather than the usual four.
The species is also notable for a frequent guest: the ascomycete Helminthosphaeria clavariarum commonly infects it, turning the branches grey to almost black from the base upward. Heavily parasitised material is a classic source of confusion with the naturally grey Clavulina cinerea.
How to identify it
Fruiting body
A small, tufted, repeatedly branched cluster 2-8 cm tall and 1-6 cm wide, growing from soil singly or in scattered groups and sometimes in rows along path banks. The texture is soft and slightly waxy rather than fibrous.
Branches and tips
Branches are white to cream, sometimes ivory or faintly pinkish, rounded to slightly flattened, and divide upward into progressively finer segments. The terminal tips are the key character: each ends in a cluster of tiny, sharp, crest-like points resembling a miniature antler or cockscomb, quite unlike the blunt tips of most corals.
Flesh, discoloration and spore print
Flesh is white and brittle. Old or damaged specimens, and especially parasitised ones, discolour grey to blackish from the base upward. The spore print is white, and spores are broadly elliptical to almost round and smooth, produced two at a time on each basidium.
Where and when it grows
Crested Coral fruits from soil, moss and thin leaf litter in both broadleaf and conifer woodland, and is very frequent on shaded banks, path edges and among moss on woodland tracks. It tolerates a range of soil types and appears in plantations as well as ancient woods.
The season is long, running from summer through late autumn, and it is one of the fungi most reliably found in mixed woodland during that period. Distribution is broad across Europe, North America and temperate Asia.
Ecological role
Clavulina species are understood to be ectomycorrhizal, forming nutrient-exchange associations with the roots of both broadleaf trees and conifers, which accounts for their abundance in wooded habitats and their absence from wood substrates.
The species also plays host to the parasitic ascomycete Helminthosphaeria clavariarum, which colonises the fruiting body and produces minute black flask-shaped fruit bodies on the darkened surface. This interaction is so common that grey-based Crested Coral is arguably encountered as often as the pure white form, and it makes the species a useful teaching example of fungus-on-fungus parasitism.
Similar species
Clavulina cinerea is uniformly ash-grey to lilac-grey from the outset, with blunter, less finely crested tips. Clavulina rugosa has few, thick, wrinkled and mostly unbranched clubs rather than a finely divided crown of crests. Parasitised Crested Coral bridges the gap in colour, so tip structure is the more dependable character.
Ramaria species are generally much larger, more robust, and give a pale ochre-yellow spore print instead of white. Artomyces pyxidatus grows on wood and ends each branch in a neat crown of points arranged in a ring, a different geometry from the irregular crests of Clavulina.