Fungus: Specimen #3 Jelly Fungus

Fig.1 Witch's Butter growing on a log

Name: Tremella mesenterica -Witch's Butter
Family: Tremellaceae
Collection Date: October 4, 2011
Habitat: Growing on a dead tree
Location: The West Woods in Russell, Ohio
Description: "The fruiting body is flabby or gelatinous when fresh, but bone-hard when dry; 1-10 cm broad, consisting of several brainlike lobes or folds, but in wet weather or old age often bloblike or amorphous; clear yellow to golden-yellow to bright orange, paler (to nearly colorless) when old or waterlogged. Flesh gelatinous. No stalk" (Arora p. 673, 1986).
Key Used: Arora, D. (1986). Mushrooms Demystified. New York: Ten Speed Press.
Keying Steps:
Key to the Basidiomycetes
1A. Basidia and spores borne externally ( on the exposed surfaces of gills, tubes, spines, branches, lobes, etc.); spores forcibly discharged at maturity, i.e., a spore print often (but not always) obtainable; fruiting body with a cap and a stalk, or clublike, or branched, or bracketlike, or crustlike (without a stalk or sometimes without a cap) or lobed or bloblike, etc. ... 2
2B. Not as above... Hymenomycetes, below

Key to the Hymenomycetes
1B. Not as above; pores and tubes absent... 3
3B. Gills absent (but spines, warts, folds, or wrinkles may be present)... 4
4A. Fruiting body gelatinous (jellylike) or very rubbery; usually (but not always) growing on wood; basidia partitioned or forked (under the microscope)... Tremellales & Allies, p. 669

Key to the Tremellales & Allies
1A. Fruiting body brightly colored (yellow, orange, pink, red, or greenish) when fresh, but sometimes losing its color in rainy weather or old age... 2
2B. not as above... 3
3B. Not as above; fruiting body cup-shaped to cone-shaped, cushion shaped, irregularly lobe and contorted, or amorphous (bloblike)... 6
6B. Not as above; fruting body bloblike to cushion-shaped to irregularly lobed or brainlike... 7
7B. Not aas above; fruiting body usually larger... 8
8A. Typically growing on hardwoods; bone-hard when dry; basidia shaped like hot-cross buns in top view... Tremella mesenterica, p. 673

Fig. 2 This specimen shows a good example

of the folds that Witch's Butter develops (Kuo, 2008).

Fig. 3 Notice the difference in color between each picture. It depends on the
environmental conditions that the fungus has experienced. Appears brain-like. (Joint Genome Institute, 2011).