Tremella mesenterica

The dreicht weather continues, with the temperature hovering just above zero at night, followed by a damp, misty-grey, windless day. It's hardly weather to cheer us over the Christmas holiday but we've been out in it every day, mostly walking or biking the forestry tracks from which, frustratingly, we can just see....

....occasional flash of sunshine on the hills; so those who have climbed Bheinn Bhraggie in the last few days describe warm sunshine above the mist.

This isn't enough for some who have decided to quit the east of Scotland's weather in search of sunshine elsewhere, and have chosen Lochaber instead. This is almost unheard of: Lochaber sunnier than East Sutherland? Incredible! What next?

On the positive side, what we know as witches' butter seems to thrive in these conditions. We always find it growing on branches of dead gorse, of which there is an abundance where the estate has cut back the roadside verges.

Tremella mesenterica is a spectacular jelly fungus so richly deserves more than one name: it's also known as yellow brain fungus. According to the Woodland Trust's website here, European legend had it that, "....if yellow brain fungus appeared on the gate or door of a house it meant that a witch had cast a spell on the family living there. The only way the spell could be removed was by piercing the fungus several times with straight pins until it went away."