Scarlet Elf Cups

On my walk today in Dunrobin woods I found thirteen of the fruiting bodies of the scarlet elf cup, all of them within five metres of the base of....

....the same tree where I found three back at the beginning of February - see post here. It's not for want of trying: I've been searching for them in other, similar places - that is, where there are the decaying remains of a hardwood tree with much of them covered with moss and plenty of rotting leaf litter around - without success, so I have absolutely no idea what is so special about this one spot.

From my searches on the internet it's not clear whether this species grows on the leaf litter or - as seems quite clear in this picture - on the rotten wood. Either way, the recent weather seems to have suited them as I now have them from about 40mm across to only 10mm, and they seem to be growing, in size as well as numbers.

They also vary in colour. All have deep scarlet inside the 'cup' from which the elf drinks his/her dew but the colour of the outside varies from a similar scarlet to....

....almost orange. The skin on the inside is smooth, on the outside slightly hairy, and the stalks are white.

What intrigues me is why there appears to be only this one 'outcrop' of elf cups around this one tree. The internet describes the species as 'widespread' but 'not common in Britain', so some spores must have travelled miles, somehow, to find a perfect place to settle around this tree. The same mystery applies to other things, like the local orchids, where there are often many miles between the places where they grow.

So the scarlet elf cup has many mysteries but these don't detract from the beauty of this species, its colour so unexpected in woodlands which are predominately dull brown at this time of year.