Dust to dust

Earlier in the year we had felled a large sycamore in the garden. Nature's squad of recyclers is now busy at work reducing the stump to its elements. The pink and red spots are the fruiting bodies of a fungus known as coral spot Nectria cinnabarina.

Coral spot enjoys a complex sex life going through a spongy conidial stage (producing asexual spores) and then a tough perithecial stage (producing sexual spores). In the photograph the pink fungal blobs are the sexual phase and the red spots the asexual.

Nectria, the genus name, comes from the same stem as necrosis and means 'killer'. The specific epithet cinnabarina means cinnabar coloured (like red lead).