The dead men arise

Autumn is here and right on cue the fingers of dead men start to rise from the forest floor.

Thankfully they aren't the fingers of real dead men. They are the fruiting bodies of the fungus Xylaria polymorpha which are known colloquially as dead man's fingers. It is a saprobic fungus, that is to say that it gets its nutrition from dead and decaying organic matter. It is a common inhabitant of forest and woodland and usually grows, as here, from the bases of rotting or injured tree stumps and decaying wood.