Scarlet elf cup mushrooms

Beautiful red winter mushrooms

Scarlet elf cups Sarcoscypha austriaca (Tho I think these are actually ruby elfcups!! Sarcoscypha coccinea)

It’s that time of year when the little red jewels are on a wild mossy damp floor near you!!!

Elfcups are one of my absolute favourite fungi, they’re pretty, easy to spot and taste great with an awesome texture! (Ignore the woodland trust when they say they’re inedible 🤯 they’re missing out!)

There’s no look a likes for these guys so they’re a pretty safe beginner mushroom!!

Often growing in abundance it’s easy to get carried away when harvesting these guys, please be mindful of this when you’re picking only take the big ones that you can fit your thumb inside the cup and give the others chance to grow and spore.

They grow really slowly too it can take an elf cup 2-3 weeks to get to its full size!

Identifying features for scarlet or ruby elfcups

•growing on dead branches and sticks (often mossy ones) they love willow the best
• no real stem which is a salmon pinky buff colour
•in side the cup is smooth and bright scarlet red
• spores are white and if you blow over the top they will sometimes release a little cloud of spores

If you’ve all these features it’s likely you have a scarlet or ruby elfcup

The two species of elf cup are both equally edible and good the only difference is microscopically ruby has straight hairs and scarlet has curly!

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