Lion's Mane
Lion's mane is one of the easiest fungi to identify with confidence: a rounded white cushion hanging from a hardwood trunk, covered not in gills or pores but in a beard of soft, downward-pointing icicle-like spines. It is white and fresh when young, yellowing and browning with age. It grows as a single unbranched mass, usually from a wound or a dead branch stub on an otherwise living oak or beech.
Ecologically it is a decomposer that colonises injured heartwood, so it recycles damaged wood on standing trees. It has no dangerous lookalike — the other toothed Hericium species are also white and spined and simply differ in whether they branch. The combination of pure-white colour, cascading spines, and single-clump growth from a hardwood wound is distinctive enough that it is a good species for learning to read fungi in the garden with certainty.
Colonises and recycles wounded and dead heartwood on living hardwoods. A benign, easily recognised member of the garden's wood-decay community.
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