How to Identify a Sulfur Tuft

The Sulfur Tuft (Hypholoma fasciculare) is a poisonous mushroom often found in dense clusters on decaying wood.

Here are its key features:

Identification

Cap: Bright yellow to greenish-yellow, often darker orange or brown in the center. Convex when young, flattening with age.

Gills: Greenish-yellow at first, turning darker with age (often olive or blackish from the spores). Stem: Slender, yellowish, sometimes with orange or rusty tones toward the base.

Spore Print: Purple-brown to blackish. Growth: Grows in large, clustered “tufts” on rotting stumps, logs, and buried wood, especially in coniferous or mixed forests.

Season: Common in summer through late autumn in temperate regions.

Toxicity: Very bitter taste and poisonous (causes severe gastrointestinal upset if consumed). Sometimes mistaken for edible cluster-forming mushrooms like honey fungus (Armillaria mellea), which makes proper identification crucial.

Ecological Role: A saprotroph, meaning it breaks down dead wood, returning nutrients to the soil. It plays an important role in forest ecosystems by recycling decaying material.

Sulfur Tuft mushrooms (Hypholoma fasciculare) fluoresce under UV light: Their gills and caps often glow a greenish color when exposed to a blacklight (UV lamp). This is due to certain compounds in the mushroom tissue that react to ultraviolet wavelengths.

It’s not as dramatic as the well-known bioluminescent fungi like Panellus stipticus or Mycena chlorophos (which glow in complete darkness without UV), but under a UV torch, sulfur tufts give off a clear fluorescent sheen, which mycologists sometimes use as an identification aid.