The Undead

Deep in the forest, the dead are stirring and the fingers of dead men are once again clawing their way out of the ground. Sleep tight!


Fear not , they aren't the fingers of real dead men but rather the fruiting body of a fungus known as Xylaria polymorpha. Dead man's fingers, 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.