Crimped gillPlicaturopsis crispa

Crimped gill (Plicaturopsis crispa), listed as Plicatura crispa in British recording schemes, is a tiny fungus that forms thin fans in dense tiers along dead branches. From above it's orange-brown with concentric zones and a white, wavy edge, and underneath it has neither gills nor pores, just pale, wavy, forking folds like crimped pastry. Its Latin name crispa means curled or crimped.

How do you identify crimped gill? Each fan or shell is usually 1 to 2 cm across, up to 3 cm, attached at the side or at one narrow point, and neighbours often fuse. On the top of horizontal branches it can form little flower-like rosettes. The upper surface is finely felty, zoned in tawny orange, orange-brown and yellow-brown, with a pale or white wavy edge that's often rolled under. Young ones are whitish and turn browner with age. Fresh ones are soft and pliant; dry ones are brittle, curl up and become hard to spot. Turn one over: the underside is pale, dirty white, greyish or tinged blue-grey or greenish, and wrinkled into radial, winding, forking folds rather than gills or pores.

Where does it grow? On dead branches and trunks of broadleaved trees, mainly beech, birch and hazel, also alder, willow and others. It's one of the first fungi to move into freshly dead branches, and within a few years stronger competitors such as turkey tail and splitgill take over. It's mainly a winter fungus, with most finds from mid-autumn to midwinter.

Is crimped gill edible? No, it isn't eaten: it's tiny, thin and leathery. We found no reports of poisoning, but no evidence that it's safe either. No medicinal uses have been documented.

What can you mistake it for? Turkey tail is bigger, up to about 10 cm, tough, and has tiny round white pores underneath. Splitgill is also small and fan-shaped with gill-like folds, but its top is white or greyish and hairy, and each 'gill' is split lengthways along its edge. Hairy curtain crust is also zoned, tiered and orange-brown from above, but its underside is smooth, with no folds. Outside our catalogue, oysterlings (Crepidotus) have true gills and a brown spore print, and the bitter oysterling (Panellus stipticus) has true gills and a short stem.