These tend to grow on wood that has been dead for a very long time. They will grow on both hardwood and coniferous logs. This coral fungus or coral mushroom is appropriately named because it looks like coral from the ocean floor. It is rather small, as it Latin species name, pyxidata, hints at.
Crown-Tipped Coral Mushrooms are actually one of the duller-colored coral fungi. There are some very striking, brightly-colored coral fungi, especially west of the Great Plains.
Like so many fungi, this species exists as a network of cells that obtains nourishment by digesting the rotting wood that it lives within. Most of the mushroom hidden. When ready to reproduce, the branching “fruiting body” develops outside the wood, which is a reproductive structure.
Crown-Tipped Coral Mushrooms, like other fungi, perform an important feat of breaking down once-living matter to release carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and other matter back into the soil and atmosphere.