Golden Trumpet

Golden Trumpet is one of the most easily recognised small fungi of conifer forests, less because of any single feature than because of how it grows. Hundreds of fruit bodies erupt together across the mossy surface of a rotting log, turning a whole trunk orange for a few weeks.

The genus Xeromphalina combines a small, navel-centred, brightly coloured cap with tough, wiry, dark stems and gills that run down the stem and are linked by cross-veins. The species epithet campanella means little bell, describing the young cap before it flattens and develops its characteristic central dimple.

It is a persistent fungus, drying out and reviving with rain, so a colony can remain visible for a long period. The contrast between the glowing orange cap and the almost black-brown stem, plus the tuft of tawny hairs at the stem base, makes it distinctive even at a glance.

Cap

Very small, 0.5-2.5 cm across, convex with a central depression that deepens with age into a navel or shallow funnel. The surface is smooth, moist, and bright tawny orange to yellow-orange, often paler at the margin, which is translucent-striate and may become finely scalloped.

Gills

Broadly decurrent, running well down the stem, fairly distant and pale yellow to orange-buff, and conspicuously connected by low cross-veins between the gill edges near the stem. This veining is a reliable genus character.

Stipe

Wiry and tough, 1-4 cm tall and about 1-2 mm thick, yellowish at the apex and shading to dark reddish-brown or almost blackish below. The base is clothed in a dense tuft of coarse tawny-orange hairs that binds it to the wood, giving rise to the alternative name Fuzzy Foot.

Flesh & spore print

The flesh is thin and pliable rather than brittle, yellowish in the cap and browner in the stem. The spore print is white to pale buff.

It fruits on the decaying wood of conifers, especially well-rotted logs, stumps, and large fallen branches of spruce, pine, fir, and hemlock, frequently where the surface is carpeted with moss. Colonies are typically dense, with fruit bodies packed side by side over large areas of the log, and single scattered specimens are unusual.

The species has a long season, from spring through late autumn, and fruits in flushes after rain. It is widespread and common across the boreal and montane conifer forests of North America, Europe, and northern Asia.

Golden Trumpet is a wood-rotting saprotroph. It colonises conifer wood that is already well decayed and soft, contributing to the later stages of breakdown when the log is losing structure and holding moisture like a sponge. Its abundance on mossy trunks reflects that preference for damp, advanced decay.

The tough, rehydratable fruit bodies are an adaptation to exposed log surfaces that dry rapidly. Rather than collapsing in dry weather, they shrivel and then re-expand to release spores when moisture returns, extending the effective fruiting period well beyond that of softer wood mushrooms.

Xeromphalina cauticinalis is similar in colour and stature but fruits on conifer needle litter rather than solid wood and has a longer, more slender stem. Rickenella fibula, the Orange Mosscap, grows singly among mosses in turf, has a much paler orange cap and a soft, non-tough stem without the tawny basal hair tuft.

Lichenomphalia species also have decurrent gills and orange tones but are associated with algal crusts on soil and rotten wood, and lack the dark wiry stem. Chrysomphalina chrysophylla has bright golden-yellow decurrent gills and a paler stem, and grows more sparsely rather than in swarms.