The naming of things

This is winter fungus, sometimes called velvet shanks or wild enoki. Its scientific name is (always) Flammulina velutipes.

Scientific names can be very descriptive: the generic name  Flammulina means little flames, a reference to the orange or yellow fruiting caps of all the fungi in this genus. The species name, velutipes (also called the specific epithet), means with velvet legs, which is exactly what the stems of winter fungi look and feel like.

All fungi in the genus Flammulina are related to each other: genetically similar in some significant way. In other genera, there are many fungi with the specific epithet velutipes which are not related to each other at all – but they all do have velvet legs.

Flammulina velutipes is a saprophyte, it grows in and feeds on dead wood and likes nothing better than a rotting broadleaf tree stump. There are, at this time of year, brightly coloured and eye-catching colonies growing on old elm stumps in the copse between Sleepers and Sheep Field.