A-maze-ing

'Always look underneath' is sound advice when identifying a mushroom. These blushing brackets, frequent on moribund willows, look nothing special on top but the pores below are characteristic and explain the scientific name Daedaleopsis confragosa.

Daedalus was the architect employed by King Minos of Crete to create an underground maze of “numberless winding passages and turns that opened into one another, seeming to have neither beginning nor end” in which to imprison the queen's monstrous birth, the Minotaur, requiring an annual ration of hapless sacrificial youths and maidens until Theseus, with the help of his lover Ariadne, slew the monster in the maze and unravelled his way out.

The insets here show the intricate pattern of mazy pores under the Daedaleopsis. The name was bestowed by the 18th century naturalist James Bolton, a self-taught weaver's son who published An History of Fungusses growing about Halifax in 1790. The three volume tome was the result of dedicated study and not a few challenges. He laments
One curious and extraordinary Fungus was found growing on a Log of Wood, in the cellar of a Publick House in Leeds, in the beginning of October, 1788... I had an opportunity of drawing it when fresh and newly gathered, but it is in the possession of a Man of such a temper (who is no Naturalist) that no offers I could make him would prevail him to part with it! Perhaps the fearsome publican required some living lad or lass as suitable exchange.