'The spore is on the wind tonight'

I've heard of romancing the stone but smooching a log...?

This is coral spot fungus Nectria cinnabarina, in its perithecial stage with little scarlet warts that look like red caviar. Appropriately enough for the day, this is the sexual form of the fungus; it also appears in a conidial (asexual) form as similiar-sized but lighter-coloured smooth round lumps. The two forms were at one time thought to represent different fungi.

Coral spot is parasitic and can be seen to have invaded the timber where there was a lesion: the kiss of death!

My title is from Rose Darling by Steeleye Span, 1975.