I certainly did not to expect to come across a pink fuzzy fungi in my explorations around Middle Way Nature Reserve! I couldn’t find it in my mushroom ID book, however posting on a mushroom ID facebook page helped with the identification.
This mushroom is one of the most common mushrooms on the planet – found on all seven continents!
I wish I had known at the time to get a photo of the underside of this fungus so that you can see how the bottom “gills” are actually folds of the flesh, rather than real gills.
Size: Cap 1-4 cm Family: Schizophyllaceae Habitat: Found on decaying wood after rains. It remains on the wood but shrivels up waiting for the rains again. Identification: "Its small pleurotoid fruiting bodies lack stems, and they attach themselves like tiny bracket fungi on the deadwood of deciduous trees. Unlike a bracket fungus, however, Schizophyllum commune has what appear to be gills on its underside, rather than pores or a simple, flat surface. On close inspection the "gills" turn out to be merely folds in the undersurface—and they are very distinctively "split" or "doubled" From mushroomexpert.com
