“Plant” of the day: orange jelly

Which witch is which? As mentioned on Halloween, the slimy and wonderful witch’s jellies can be hard to tell apart. Orange jelly Dacrymyces palmatus (also called orange witch’s butter or witch’s jelly) is the only one that lives on the dead wood of conifers. It often looks very much like a brilliantly colored, tiny brain–but it can become more flattened as well, so the best way to ID it is to know what kind of tree it is growing on. In this photo you can see the tiny blisters of sap under the bark that let you know you’re looking at a young Douglas fir tree.