Oh my gosh – this name! Who named this? Also it is such a weird looking fungus! Who saw this and thought, OH this TOTALLY looks like a tuning fork. I mean, I’ve seen a tuning fork and it looks nothing like this. But I digress.
This is a jelly fungus, so it feels a bit gelatinous in texture. OK, so the name is because these fungi have unique “tuning fork” basidia. What’s a basidia? Well, I had to look that up, and it’s complicated if you’re not a biologist, so here’s a link to the wiki page about it, if you’re super curious…
Size: 3 mm in diameter, and 2 cm in height. Family: Dacrymycetaceae Habitat: After heavy rains on the deadwood of oaks and other hardwoods, where it appears in groups of slick, cylindric fruiting bodies with rounded-off or sharpened tips. Identifiers: Yellow to orange tapering gelatinous spiny looking finger-like things.
