Wrinkled Club
Clavulina rugosa
Also called wrinkled coral, wrinkled club fungus, wrinkled clavulina
A white club fungus with thick, irregularly wrinkled and grooved stems that are unbranched or only sparsely forked. It grows from soil in woodland, often along shaded path edges.
Overview
Wrinkled Club is the least coral-like member of the woodland Clavulina group, producing thick, irregular, white to cream clubs 4-12 cm tall that are often entirely unbranched or divided into just a few blunt arms. Its surface is longitudinally wrinkled, grooved and often slightly flattened or twisted, giving it a distinctly rumpled look.
The genus sits in the Clavulinaceae within the Cantharellales, alongside chanterelles and hedgehog fungi. Like its relatives it produces a white spore print and basidia bearing two spores each, characters that unite the genus despite the range of branching habits.
Among club fungi generally, its size and toughness are notable. Where Clavaria clubs are slender, fragile and often densely tufted, Wrinkled Club is comparatively stout, tough-fleshed and irregular, more like a distorted finger than a spindle.
How to identify it
Fruiting body
An erect club 4-12 cm tall and 0.5-1.5 cm thick, either simple or with a few short, blunt, antler-like branches near the top. Specimens grow singly, in small groups or in loose rows, and often lean or curve rather than standing straight.
Surface and tips
The surface is white to cream, ageing to buff or faintly greyish, and is conspicuously wrinkled and grooved along its length with irregular ridges and shallow furrows. The apex is blunt, sometimes flattened, sometimes split into two or three short points; there is no fine crested fringe.
Flesh and spore print
Flesh is white, fairly tough and elastic rather than brittle, and does not change colour markedly when cut. Old material may darken greyish, particularly toward the base. The spore print is white, with broadly elliptical to subglobose smooth spores.
Where and when it grows
Wrinkled Club fruits from soil, moss and thin leaf litter in broadleaf and mixed woodland, and is especially frequent along shaded woodland paths, on mossy banks and on the grassy verges of forest tracks. It occurs under beech, oak, birch and conifers alike.
The season is late summer through late autumn, often continuing after the main flush of other woodland fungi has ended. The species is widespread and common across Europe, North America and temperate Asia.
Ecological role
Like other Clavulina species, Wrinkled Club is regarded as ectomycorrhizal, forming nutrient-exchange partnerships with the fine roots of woodland trees. This explains its consistent association with wooded ground and its absence from dead wood, dung or compost.
The fungus fruits from a persistent soil mycelium and can reappear along the same stretch of path year after year. Its relatively tough fruiting bodies stand for weeks, shedding spores from the entire outer surface, and eventually soften and are broken down by litter fauna, returning their nutrients to the topsoil.
Similar species
Clavaria fragilis forms dense clusters of slender, smooth, fragile white spindles that snap easily, without the thick wrinkled surface or the occasional short branches. Clavulina coralloides is much more finely and repeatedly branched, ending in crested antler-like tips. Clavulina cinerea is evenly ash-grey and more branched.
Clavaria acuta is a small, smooth, unbranched white club with a distinct narrow stem base, far more slender than Wrinkled Club. Larger white branched corals with an ochre-yellow spore print belong to Ramaria rather than to this group.