(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

Hazel Woodwart

Inedible

Spring

Winter

View Full Size Image

Hazel Woodwart, Hypoxylon fuscum

Small, irregular, but mostly flattened-hemispherical rusty brown to black coloured warts found in large numbers on dead or fallen Hazel.

Mushroom Type
Common Names	Hazel Woodwart, Dafaden Cyll (CY), Barnásvörös Ripacsgomba (HU)
Scientific Name	Hypoxylon fuscum
Synonyms	Hypoxylon confluens, Sphaeria fusca
Season Start	Feb
Season End	May
Average Mushroom height (CM)
Average Cap width (CM)

Please note that each and every mushroom you come across may vary in appearance to these photos.

Fruiting Body

Fruit bodies (stroma in singular, stromata in plural) look like small, only 2–4 mm in diameter, irregularly flattened-hemispherical, rusty brown coloured warts (blackening with age), covered in even tinier lumps (which holds flask-shaped individual chambers, called perithecium in singular and perithecia in plural, which contains the asci.
It fruits mostly from February to May but its fruit bodies can be found year round.

Flesh

Tough and black.

Habitat

Saprotrophic on dead wood (incl. standing or fallen branches) of Hazel (Corylus), occasionally Alder (Alnus), causes white-rot. Same as its relatives, it is one of the earliest colonisers of the suitable hosts/substrates. Once it has started to colonise the dead wood, it will start growing in large numbers.

Possible Confusion

Hazel woodwart (Hypoxylon fuscum) mostly can be confused with other woodwarts.
Hypoxylon fuscoides mostly grows on Alder (Alnus) and Birch (Betula). Microscopy is a must for its solid, species-level ID, its pigments stains crimson in KOH, while the pigments of Hazel Woodwart (H. fuscum) stains orange in KOH.
Beech woodwart (Hypoxylon fragiforme), pictured, is larger and mostly growing on Beech (Fagus) and sometimes on other hardwoods.
Fully mature Hypoxylon howeanum fruit bodies look almost identical to Beech Woodwart (microscopy is a must for a solid, species-level ID), while it is easy to separate the two species in their younger stage. Hypoxylon howeanum can grow on many different deciduous trees, but mostly found on Hornbeam (Carpinus).