Rosy Crust

Rosy Crust is among the brightest of the small resupinate fungi and is often the first crust a beginner learns to name. It coats dead twigs and thin branches in patches of vivid salmon, coral or apricot, standing out against grey bark even on dull winter days.

The genus Peniophora (Peniophoraceae) contains a number of thin waxy crusts that are separated in the field largely by colour, drying behaviour and the tree species they occupy. Peniophora incarnata is the warm pink-orange member of the group, and unlike several relatives it stays flat rather than curling away from the wood.

It is a common and widespread species, tolerant of a broad range of substrates, and it fruits year-round wherever there is enough moisture. Colour is strongest when the crust is wet; drying turns it duller orange-brown and finely cracked.

Fruiting body

Resupinate, forming small rounded patches that spread and merge into elongated bands running along a twig, sometimes for ten centimetres or more. Thickness rarely exceeds a millimetre.

Surface

Smooth to minutely warted or slightly granular, waxy and soft when moist. Colour ranges from pale salmon-pink through coral to a strong apricot-orange; dried material darkens to dull orange-brown and develops a fine network of cracks.

Margin

Paler than the centre, thin, and often finely fringed or slightly raised where it is advancing onto fresh bark. The edge is not black or dark-lined.

Flesh and spore print

Flesh is thin and waxy, concolorous with the surface, and shows no colour change when cut. The spore print is white.

Occurs on dead attached twigs and small branches of a wide range of broadleaved trees and shrubs — hazel, oak, ash, willow, blackthorn and gorse are all frequent — and also on standing dead stems of woody scrub. It is often found on branches still held in the canopy or in the shrub layer, rather than on wood lying on the ground.

Fruiting bodies persist all year and are easiest to spot in autumn and winter after rain, when the colour is at its most saturated. The species is widespread and common through Europe and much of the north temperate zone.

Peniophora incarnata is a saprotroph producing a white rot in small-diameter dead wood. It typically colonises twigs and branchlets that have died back while still attached to the shrub or tree, and continues to decay them once they fall.

By specialising in fine woody debris it occupies a niche that larger bracket fungi rarely use, and it is an important early recycler of hedgerow and scrub brash. Spores are released from the exposed waxy surface and dispersed on air currents to newly dead twigs.

Peniophora quercina is the commonest confusion on oak but is lilac-grey rather than pink-orange, and when dry it curls away from the bark in flakes with a blackish under-surface. Peniophora lycii is grey to pale violet-grey and lacks warm tones altogether.

Phlebia radiata can be a similar orange but is thicker, more gelatinous, and marked with radiating wrinkles and warts in the centre. Cytidia salicina on willow forms discrete blood-red cushions rather than a spreading film, and Stereum rugosum is a much thicker cream crust whose surface reddens when scratched.