Winter Chanterelle

Craterellus tubaeformis is a small, late-season member of the family Cantharellaceae, closely related to the golden chanterelles and to the black trumpets. It has been shuffled between Cantharellus and Craterellus more than once; current treatments place it in Craterellus on the basis of its thin flesh, hollow stem and the cap that is usually perforated at the centre so that cap and stem form a single continuous tube.

Like other chanterelles it has no true gills. The undersurface carries shallow, blunt, forking, decurrent ridges connected by cross-veins, which in this species are noticeably greyish or lilac-grey when fresh, contrasting with the brown cap and the bright yellow stem. This three-tone colouring is the quickest way to recognise it.

It is a fungus of damp, mossy, acidic conifer woodland and is among the last larger fungi of the year in many regions, continuing to fruit through light frosts long after most autumn species have finished. It typically appears in large numbers, scattered through moss carpets and over rotting logs, and the fruiting bodies are unusually tough and persistent for their size.

Cap

2-6 cm across, convex with an in-rolled margin at first, soon becoming funnel-shaped with a wavy, lobed, irregular margin. The colour is greyish-brown, yellow-brown to dark umber, often paler at the edge, and the surface is dry and finely scaly or minutely felty rather than smooth. In most specimens the centre of the cap is perforated, opening into the hollow stem so that the whole fruiting body forms a continuous tube.

False gills

The undersurface bears shallow, blunt, widely spaced, thick forking ridges with cross-veins, decurrent well down the stem. They are grey, grey-lilac or greyish-ochre when fresh, becoming more yellowish or buff with age, and are far less developed than the ridges of the Golden Chanterelle. They cannot be shed sideways off the cap because they are folds of the flesh.

Stipe

3-8 cm tall and 3-10 mm thick, hollow throughout, often flattened, grooved or irregularly compressed, and a clear yellow to orange-yellow that gives the species its name Yellowfoot. It is smooth, dry and frequently curved where it emerges from moss. There is no ring and no volva.

Flesh & spore print

Flesh very thin, whitish to pale yellow, elastic and rather tough, tearing in fibres. Smell faint and slightly fruity. There is no distinct bruising reaction. The spore print is white to very pale cream.

Winter Chanterelle grows in damp, mossy, acidic woodland, most often coniferous, with spruce and pine as the commonest partners and beech, birch and oak used in mixed stands. It is strongly associated with deep moss carpets, wet hollows, boggy woodland margins and heavily decayed mossy logs and stumps, into which its mycelium extends alongside the soil.

Fruiting begins in autumn and continues into early winter, persisting through light frosts and often producing the last significant flushes of the season. Fruiting bodies appear in large scattered troops, sometimes in the hundreds across a single moss bank. The species is widespread across northern and temperate Europe, and closely related taxa occupy the same niche in North America, where Pacific and eastern populations have been separated as distinct species in recent work.

The species is ectomycorrhizal with conifers and some broadleaves, forming a hyphal sheath around fine root tips and exchanging mineral nutrients and water for tree sugars. Unusually for a mycorrhizal fungus, it fruits abundantly on and around rotting mossy logs, where its mycelium exploits the dense root mats that conifers push into decaying wood, which is why it so often appears to be growing directly on timber.

Its late season and frost tolerance let it occupy a period when competition from other fruiting fungi is low, and its thin, elastic, weather-resistant fruiting bodies survive rain and freezing far better than the soft flesh of most autumn agarics. Colonies are perennial and return to the same moss banks year after year, making it a good indicator of undisturbed, moist, acidic forest floor.

The Golden Chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius) is larger, uniformly egg-yellow, has a solid tapering stem and thick fibrous flesh, and its ridges are well developed and yellow rather than shallow and grey-lilac. Craterellus lutescens is similar in build with a hollow orange-yellow stem but has an almost smooth to merely wrinkled undersurface with barely any ridges at all, and a more orange overall cast.

Craterellus cornucopioides, the black trumpet, is dark grey to sooty black throughout with an almost smooth, faintly wrinkled undersurface and no yellow on the stem. Small brown Hygrophoropsis species and various brown agarics have true thin blade-like gills that can be detached from the cap flesh, a solid stem and no central perforation. The combination of a perforated brown funnel, grey-lilac blunt ridges and a hollow yellow stem is distinctive.