Yellow Matter

I think this might be yellow brain fungus. The colour jumped out at me on this horrible, grey, wet day. It's on the branch that parted company with our southerly oak tree last year. The fungus is living on another fungus which is living on the dead wood. 

It gets the name Tremella from the fact that it trembles or wobbles like a jelly. The epithet mesenterica comes for the Ancient Greek meaning middle intestine. I well remember a consultant at the hospital my mother-in-law was taken to, after a car crash that killed my sister-in-law, explaining that her mesentery and its blood supply was badly damaged. He drew a pic to illustrate what he was telling me. I think he was trying to break it to me that she was past help. I told him that she wasn't an ordinary old woman, that she was valued and that she still came to work every day, even though she was in her eighties. He agreed to operate and managed to repair the damage. A colostomy was constructed and that was later reversed. She lived on until she was ninety-eight.