The naming of fungi

This is winter fungus growing on (and in) one of the reserve’s oak trees. It is sometimes called velvet shanks or wild enoki but 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: they are all 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.

It is unusual to find Flammulina velutipes growing on living wood; usually it is a saprophyte, growing in and feeding on dead wood. It likes nothing better than a rotting broadleaf tree stump and, as the autumn progresses, there will be brightly coloured and eye-catching colonies growing on the old elm stumps in the copse between Sleepers and Sheep Field.