Clubs or spindles

I thought this was 'golden spindles' Clavulinopsis fusiformes  but then I wondered if it might be'yellow club fungus' Clavulinopsis helvola. They are said to be diffilcult to distinguish without comparing the spores. Never mind, because either way it looks like a charming little bundle of jaundiced fingers or feelers thrusting up from the ground.

When I blip fungi that don't conform to the expected pattern of stem and cap people often say they have never ever seen them. Indeed a species like this one might all too easily be crushed underfoot by a careless or wilful foot. (It would do no harm since the main organism, the mycelium, lies beneath the surface.) But in actual fact fungi live all around us and indeed on us as microscopic moulds and yeasts. Some do harm in the form of thrush, athlete's foot and worse, others are employed in the making of essential food and drink: raising bread, fermenting wine and pickles, creating cheese and so on, others change the course of history (the Irish potato famine). But the vast majority exist silently and secretly in the soil where their symbiotic union with the roots of plants and trees underpins the whole of our world as we know it - and its future. 

"Mycorrhizal fungi live in the roots of host plants, where they exchange sugars that plants produce by photosynthesis for mineral nutrients that fungi absorb from the soil... Recent studies indicate that mycorrhizal fungi also play a significant role in below-ground carbon sequestration, which may mitigate the effects of anthropogenic CO2 emissions."
[Joint Genome Institute, US Dept. of Energy]


So, look out for fungi in their different shapes and forms, admire them, appreciate them, fear them or shudder if you will, kick or stamp on them if you must, it won't make any difference  because they are here  and without them we and our world would not survive. We need them more than they need us.