Written in Lichen and Carved in Fungi Across Springtime Coed-Y-Canddo

Spring is beginning to stretch its fingers through Coed-Y-Canddo Wood. Even if all we have had since the turn of the year is rain. The air feels charged with quiet momentum. Buds are swelling, birds are louder, and the woodland floor, far from waking, suddenly reveals it has been busy all along.

Today’s walk became a reminder that spring doesn’t replace winter; it builds on it.

Among moss and leaf litter, clusters of Glistening Inkcaps (Coprinellus micaceus) rose from buried wood like small amber lanterns. Their caps, finely ribbed and dusted with mica-like granules, shimmered in the damp light. Inkcaps live fast. As they mature, their gills dissolve into black ink in a process called deliquescence ( a new word for me), a remarkable strategy that liquefies the mushroom to release spores. Even their collapse is engineered.

Glistening Inkcaps

On a fallen log, spring’s warmth hadn’t slowed the decomposers. Velvet Shank (Flammulina velutipes) still clung on — apricot caps and pale gills defying seasonal boundaries. This species thrives in the cold but lingers into milder spells, bridging the seasons. 

Velvet Shank 

Nearby, glossy cushions of Black Bulgar (Bulgaria inquinans) sat like droplets of tar, while folds of Witches’ Butter (Exidia glandulosa) gleamed in the moisture. These fungi are the woodland’s quiet chemists, breaking down lignin — the tough polymer that gives trees their rigidity. Without them, spring’s new growth would eventually have nowhere to root.

Witches’ Butter(Centre), White Brain (Bottom Left), Fungus and Black Buglar(top left)

A flash of colour stopped me mid-step: Scarlet Elf Cup (Sarcoscypha sp.), its crimson interior glowing against fresh green moss. These ascomycetes produce spores inside microscopic sacs called asci, firing them into the air in invisible bursts. They often fruit from buried twigs, which makes them feel like the woodland’s hidden embers — sparks beneath the surface as everything else begins to leaf out.

Higher up, the bark was alive with subtler stories.

Flattened or Even Scalewort 

Clinging flat against damp bark was Flattened or Even Scalewort (Radula complanata), a leafy liverwort that often escapes notice because it blends so seamlessly with the tree itself. Unlike mosses, which rise in tiny stems and leaves, Radula grows pressed tightly to the surface, its overlapping bilobed leaves forming neat, scale-like rows. With a hand lens, each “leaf” reveals a smaller folded lobe tucked beneath — a structural detail that defines the genus.

It favours humid, shaded woodland and is particularly at home on smooth-barked trees where moisture lingers. Though modest in size, it plays an outsized ecological role, helping regulate moisture on bark surfaces and creating microhabitats for invertebrates and microorganisms. Liverworts like Radula are among the earliest land plants, their ancestors colonising terrestrial surfaces hundreds of millions of years before trees dominated the landscape.

Rosettes of Common Greenshield Lichen (Flavoparmelia caperata) spread in luminous yellow-green lobes, brighter now under strengthening light. Lichens are partnerships — fungus and algae bound together — and they respond quickly to humidity and light changes.

Common Greenshield Lichen

 Nearby, pale crusts of Lecanora formed neat circular patches, while the elegant black calligraphy of Graphis scripta etched script-like lines across smooth bark. Those elongated markings are fruiting bodies called lirellae — spores written into wood grain.

Graphis scripta

Among the damp folds of elder and fallen hardwood, Jelly Ear (Auricularia auricula-judae) hung like translucent amber parchment. When freshly hydrated, its surface glows reddish-brown and rubbery; the folds are almost ear-shaped, hence the common name. In dry weather, it shrinks to a hard, shrivelled fragment, seemingly lifeless. Add rain, and it rehydrates within hours, returning to its elastic form. That ability to cycle between desiccation and revival is a quiet superpower. 

Jelly Ear 

Further along the log, tiered brackets of Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor) spread like miniature fans. Their concentric bands , charcoal, chestnut, tan, cream, resemble the fanned tail feathers of a wild turkey. Each thin bracket is tough and leathery, persisting long after softer fungi have collapsed. Turn one over, and the underside reveals thousands of microscopic pores, not gills. Those pores are the exit points for spores, making Turkey Tail a highly efficient disperser.

Ecologically, Turkey Tail is a white-rot fungus. It specialises in breaking down lignin, the tough polymer that gives wood its rigidity. Lignin is notoriously difficult to decompose, yet fungi like Trametes evolved enzymes capable of dismantling it. Without white-rot fungi, hardwood forests would accumulate undecaying timber. Spring growth depends on this invisible chemical work.

Turkey Tail 

What stood out most today was layering.

On a single log: moss managing hydration, jelly fungi rehydrating after rain, bracket fungi digesting structural wood, inkcaps racing through brief reproductive cycles.

On a single trunk: foliose lichens, crustose lichens, script lichens — each occupying precise ecological real estate defined by light, bark chemistry, and airflow.

Spring in Coed-Y-Canddo is not an explosion. It’s an unveiling. The life that worked patiently through winter now becomes visible. Colour intensifies. Moisture lingers longer. The woodland exhales.

Decay is not the opposite of growth here; it is its foundation.

Please note I don't profess to be an expert on Fungi, Liverwort and Lichens, so the namingof the species is a cautious best guess using my books, Google and AI ( ChatGPT and Google Gemini). I apologise in advance if there are any inaccuracies.