Red jelly fungus

The fruit bodies of Guepinia helvelloides grow singly or in small clumps. Although they can appear to be growing in the soil, their mycelium lives in buried wood. They are 4 - 10 cm tall and 3 - 17 cm wide, spoon- or tongue-shaped, and twisted like a cornet or horn so that they look like a slender funnel, cut out on one side and often with a wavy margin. The fruit bodies are flexible, 2 - 3.5 mm thick, and smooth on the outer side which they are usually attenuated on the underside into a cylindrical or depressed stem that is up to 5 cm high and about 1.5 cm thick. The stem is normally covered with a white tomentum at the base. The upper side (inside) of the fruit body is usually quite sterile or with a few isolated basidia and is slightly verrucose as a result of the densely crowded protruding ends of the hyphae. The sterile and fertile surfaces of the fruit body are almost the same color, transparent reddish-orange to flesh pink or flesh orange, at other times more purplish-red. The fruit bodies usually develop a slightly brownish tinge when they are old. The underside is usually slightly more vividly colored than the upper side. The flesh is gelatinous, softly so in the upper part of the fruit body and with a more cartilage-like consistency in the stem. It has a nondescript odor, and a watery, insignificant taste.