Yellow brain or Yellow stagshorn

The fruiting body is 3-10 cm across, gelatinous, wavy and folded, with irregular lobes and folds, like a wrinkled brain or a lump of yellow jelly pudding. It's attached by its side or back to the substrate, with no distinct stem. In wet weather it's soft, jelly-like, glossy and moist; in dry weather, old ones turn wrinkled and hard. The colour is bright yellow, lemon yellow or orange-yellow, deepening to a richer orange with maturity.

There's no cap. The fruit body is bushy: from a short base it forks into slender branches a few millimetres thick, with pointed, often forked tips, 3 to 6 cm tall and occasionally 10 cm. Small specimens can be simple spikes forked at the top.

The colour ranges from egg-yolk yellow to orange-yellow, with a paler, whitish-yellow base. It reddens as it dries. In wet weather the surface is greasy and sticky.

The spore-bearing surface covers the outside of the wavy lobes. It's smooth, with no gills, pores or spines. Spore print white.

There are no gills or pores: the spores form over almost the whole surface of the branches except the base.

The spore print is whitish to pale yellow.

No stem. The fruiting body is attached to the substrate by its side or back edge (sessile).

There's no separate stem. The short, paler base roots deep into the wood.

The flesh is gelatinous, soft in wet weather and hard in dry weather. It's transparent to translucent and yellowish, and doesn't change colour when cut. No distinct taste (neutral, jelly-like); the smell is faint and neutral.

The flesh is springy, rubbery-gelatinous and cartilaginous, bending rather than snapping. It turns hard when dry.

Faint, neutral, nothing distinctive.

The smell and taste aren't distinctive.