Auricularia auricula-judae.

After the excitement of yesterday, just posted, I drove down to the Midlands to fetch Herself home from visiting her sister who was celebrating a significant birthday. Merlin was packed in the boot, well it does keep him out of the way and he doesn’t seem to mind; It’s probably the safest place for him and he just goes to sleep. Perhaps I should point out the car is a hatchback and we leave the parcel shelf out so he can still breath. I took him out for a couple of little walks when we stopped for sanitary relief; it was during the break at Lancaster that I found this fungus growing on a birch tree. It is now not considered to be polite to use its common name so its new name is the “wood ear” fungus. The official binomial linnaean classification ignores such niceties and remains politically incorrect.