Upright Coral Identification Guide

First impression and setting

Upright Coral looks like a small, tight, pale hedge growing out of the woodland floor. You typically find it in shaded woodland on a bank of leaf litter, along a track edge, on a decaying stump, or over a pile of chipped wood, and the first thing that registers is how vertical it is. Where most coral fungi sprawl, spread or nod outward, this one grows as a dense tuft of branches held stiffly upright and closely parallel, so the whole cluster has a brushed, combed appearance.

Colour is muted: pale ochre, tan, buff, clay or a warm pinkish-cream, with the growing tips a paler yellow to almost whitish. A typical cluster is 4 to 10 cm tall and 3 to 8 cm across, occasionally larger, and several tufts often appear along the same fallen branch.

Reading the branch structure

Take the cluster in both hands and look at how it is built. A short, thick, whitish common trunk sits at the base and divides quickly into several main branches, and those branches divide again, usually two or three at a time, four to six times in total. The branches remain slender, cylindrical, and above all crowded and parallel, running up beside one another rather than spreading apart. This strict vertical habit is what the species epithet refers to and it is the most reliable field character.

The axils, the forks where branches divide, are narrow and acute in this species, not broadly rounded or U-shaped. Examine the tips with a lens. Each branch ends in two or three short, blunt to slightly pointed prongs, paler than the branch below and usually yellowish to cream when actively growing. In older or weathered specimens the tips darken to match the branches and the crown looks blunt and worn.

The whole fertile surface is the outside of the branches. There are no gills, no pores and no teeth; spores are produced across the smooth outer skin of the upper branches, so the surface may look faintly powdery or bloomed when it is shedding heavily.

The bruising test

This step is quick and it is worth doing on every candidate. Take a branch between finger and thumb and squeeze, or draw a fingernail down its length, then wait a minute or two. In Ramaria stricta the damaged tissue discolours to a distinct wine-brown, vinaceous or purplish-brown, and the mark stays. Old clusters that have been trampled or browsed are often extensively stained in this way, which is why field specimens frequently look darker and dirtier than fresh ones.

Cut a main branch across with a sharp blade. The flesh is white to pale cream, tough, fibrous and slightly elastic rather than brittle, and it too slowly stains brownish at the cut face. The texture is important: this species is noticeably tougher and more leathery than the fleshy terrestrial corals, and a branch bends and tears rather than snapping cleanly.

Fresh material often has a distinctly aromatic odour, which is a supporting character rather than a decisive one, since it varies with age and weather.

Base and substrate, the decisive check

Now dig the base out. This is the single most useful thing you can do with a coral fungus, and it resolves most of the difficult cases.

Ramaria stricta grows on wood. The base narrows to a short, tough, whitish rooting point that is attached to a stick, a chip, a buried root, a log or a stump. Radiating away from it you should find conspicuous white mycelial cords, strands and felty patches binding litter and soil to the wood beneath. In heavily decayed material the wood may be soft and unrecognisable, so trace the cords carefully; they always lead to something woody.

That distinguishes it at a stroke from the majority of Ramaria species, which arise from soil in association with living tree roots and have a base embedded in earth without any wood connection and without prominent white cords. Both hardwood and conifer wood are used, and the species is common on wood chip mulch in parks and gardens, where it can form long lines of tufts along a path.

Spore print and microscopic detail

Coral fungi print readily. Stand a cluster upright with its base wedged in a small container of damp moss, and set a sheet of white paper or a glass slide against or beneath the branches, then cover the whole arrangement to still the air. A few hours produces a visible deposit, and heavily shedding specimens will dust the surrounding litter yellow of their own accord.

The print is pale ochre to yellowish-buff, never white and never dark brown. Under the microscope the spores are ellipsoid to cylindrical, roughly 7 to 10 by 4 to 5.5 micrometres, and the surface is minutely warted or roughened rather than smooth, sometimes appearing finely spiny at high magnification. Clamp connections are present in the hyphae, another useful confirmation for the genus.

Season and ecology

Fruiting runs from mid summer through autumn, and in mild regions it can carry on into early winter. It responds quickly to rain and can appear within a week of a wet spell on fresh mulch.

Ecologically the fungus is a saprotroph. Its mycelium permeates dead wood and woody litter, breaking it down and returning the nutrients to the soil. This wood-decaying lifestyle explains its abundance in managed landscapes: wherever chipped timber is spread as mulch, or brash and stumps are left to rot, it has an abundant supply of substrate, and it is often one of the first larger fungi to colonise a fresh mulch bed.

Separating it from its closest look-alikes

Ramaria apiculata is the nearest match. It also grows on wood and has upright branches, but the growing tips are tinted green or olive, at least when fresh, and the overall colour is a browner, more cinnamon tone. Under a lens its spores are larger and more coarsely ornamented.

Terrestrial Ramaria species such as R. formosa, R. botrytis and R. flava are generally much larger and fleshier, with thick, brittle, often brightly coloured branches in pink, salmon, yellow or apricot, broadly rounded axils and a massive fleshy base sunk directly into soil with no wood connection or white cords.

Artomyces pyxidatus, the crown coral, shares the wood substrate but is easily separated by its tips: each branch ends in a distinct little crown or cup with a ring of small points around a hollow centre. It is also whiter to pale ochre overall and its branch pattern is more open and candelabra-like.

Clavulina cristata grows from soil, is white to pale grey, has flattened, irregularly crested and jagged tips, prints white, and has smooth round spores.

Clavicorona and Lentaria species on wood tend to be smaller, whiter, and less densely branched, and lack the strong wine-brown bruising.

Thelephora species can form upright brown tufts on litter but have a leathery, fan-like or fringed structure rather than true cylindrical branches, and they print brown with warty, angular spores.