A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1190 entries
candlesnuff
Candlesnuff is Xylaria hypoxylon, a small tough fungus that grows in tufts on dead hardwood. It is black and hairy at the base and dusted white toward the tips, and it often forks like a set of antlers. The white powder is spore material. It is present all year and stands up out of stumps through the winter, when there is little else to look at in a wood.
Etymology
The English name comes from the look of a candle just snuffed out, the wick black and the last of it gray. Snuff in this sense is the charred end of a wick, and it was a noun before it was a verb; snuffers were the scissors made to trim it. The same fungus also goes by stag’s horn fungus and carbon antlers.