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Fluted Bird’s Nest
Inedible 
Autumn 
Spring 
Summer 
Looks like a cluster of furry black cup cake cases, with several tiny lens or lentil-shaped bonbons in them. These tiny bird nest structures are called peridiums, the small egg-like structures are called peridioles.
| Mushroom Type | |
| Common Names | Fluted Bird's Nest (EN), Bird's Nest Fungus, Nyth Aderyn Rhesog (CY), Kubek Prążkowany (PL), Csíkos Pohárgomba (HU) |
| Scientific Name | Cyathus striatus |
| Synonyms | Cyathella striata, Nidularia striata, Peziza striata |
| Season Start | May |
| Season End | Nov |
| Average Mushroom height (CM) | 0.6–1.5 |
| Average Cap width (CM) | 0.4–1 |
Fruiting Body
The fruitbody (peridium (singular), or peridia (plural)) is usually 0.6–1.5 cm tall and 0.4–1 wide; cup-shaped (tapering towards the base) or somewhat funnel-shaped (infundibuliform). It has two layers. The outer layer is brownish to greyish buff covered with numerous orange-brown to rusty brown hairs (called: tomentum), giving it a shaggy, tomentose look. The inner layer (endoperidium) is deeply striated or grooved, shiny, silky and grey coloured. The peridium is initially covered with thin, whitish membraneous seal (called: epiphragm) which is the same shaggy or tomentose as the rest of the outer layer. When the spores matured, epiphragm loses its hairs and breaks (in this way the fruitbody opens up). When rain falls, it triggers the funiculi (singular: funiculum) and shoots out the peridioles with a range of a few metres.
Flesh
Paper thin, soft at first, becoming leathery and tough with age.
Habitat
Grows in open forests (usually on the forest’s edge), parks and gardens, mostly in large clusters on the dead wood of hardwoods, such as fallen barks, twigs, even on woodchips or other decomposed vegetation. Widespread all over the UK. Common in England, occasional in Scotland, and looks rather rare (or underrecorded) in Wales, Northern Ireland or on the Channel Islands. Saprotrophic.
Possible Confusion
It only can be confused with other Bird’s Nest fungi.
Field Bird’s Nest (Cyathus olla) has silvery-white peridioles at first, later they turn to dark, metallic blackish grey.
Dung Bird’s Nest (Cyathus stercoreus) has dark grey peridioles, and they are smaller than Fluted Bird’s Nest’s peridioles.
Common Bird’s Nest (Crucibulum crucibuliforme, syn: Crucibulum laeve) has off-white peridioles with a bit of yellow touch.
None of these species have striated or grooved inner surface (endoperidium).
Taste / Smell
Inedible. Taste and smell indistinctive.
Spores
Spores are ovoid-ellipsoid, smooth, thick-walled and colourless (hyaline), inamyloid. They are encapsulated in a lens or lentil-shaped peridioles. The peridioles are 1–2 mm across, pale grey, and they have an attached small elastic string (called: funiculus) at their lower side, which helps them to spread the spores in large numbers once they are matured.
Other Facts
The species was first described by the British botanist, William Hudson (1730–1793), the author of the Flora Anglica (1762) in 1778 as Peziza striata. It was first published in the enlarged 1778 edition of the Flora Anglica. Carl Ludwig Willdenow (1765–1812), a German botanist and taxonomist transferred the species to the genus Cyathus in 1787.
Its epithet (the 2nd part of the scientific name which identifies the species within the genus), striatus, refers to the striated or grooved inner layer (endoperidium) of the nest.
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