The naturalist Nick Baker has compared them to split billiard balls. They can also resemble carelessly discarded pieces of satsuma peel. But they’re a different type of fruit altogether – the fruiting bodies of a beautiful fungus called the scarlet elf-cup.
One of its many other traditional names was fairy bath, and it is not hard to see why superstitious folk might imagine pixies taking a dip in these mysterious little ‘hot tubs’ lying on the woodland floor.
Scarlet elf-cup is a common and widespread species you can find from late autumn through to spring, but most sightings come in February and March, when the smooth inner surfaces of this eye-catching fungus seem to glow amid the browns and greens of leaf litter and moss.
It grows on damp, decaying logs and branches, often clustered together in groups known as troops. There are several related species in Britain, all with a similar cup-like form. One, the green elf-cup, is an autumn species that stains the wood on which it is feeding, turning it a luminous bluey-green.
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