Witches' Butter - Or Not!

Several sections of the path from our house down to the village have been developed as mountain bike trails. This has the advantage that there is a group which is responsible for maintaining the trails, for example by cutting back the vegetation.

The track shown in the picture above goes over an artificial mound, which may be exciting for the bikers but is hard work for us older walkers. Just to its left, beyond the bracken, is a pile of dead gorse branches on one of which....

....a yellow jelly fungus is growing - a welcome sight in these times of fungal famine.

I have always thought of this as 'witches butter'. In fact, the species, Tremella mesenterica, is more properly known as the 'yellow brain fungus' or 'golden jelly fungus', though it is often referred to by some authors as 'witches' butter'; and, to confuse matters, the proper 'witches butter', Exidia glandula, is black - see link here.

Growing close to the yellow fungus is another jelly fungus, varying from white to pale brownish. With the confusion in nomenclature of the common yellow fungus I'm not even going to try to identify this one.