Tiny Winter Polypore

Despite fighting off a cold, I had a leisurely walk round Holme Fen NNR this morning, in preparation for a walk that I'm co-leading on Sunday. I was pleased to find plenty of fungi, including many familiar species and one or two that I haven't seen there before. The most photogenic were these three very tiny fungi growing from the end of a broken birch branch - after some research I decided that they were most likely to be Winter Polypore. 

It gets its name because it is a late autumn and winter species that grows on fallen branches of deciduous trees. The pores of these thin-capped polypores cannot be detached from the upper layer of the cap. Tough and inedible, these are not fungi to gather as food; however, the dried caps are sometimes used as table decorations or as inert contributors to pot pourri.