I had thought I might have been too late for the scarlet elf cup season when I went looking for them mid-February. I did find some that day. This is just a small sample of the many elf cups we found on a revisit almost a fortnight later.
As we went into the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve, we found that several of the mature trees lining the Railway Walk opposite Cupcake Lane had been felled between our two visits. This left a new open space along the embankment by the Railway Walk, but had also resulted in clearing away a lot of undergrowth on the footpath along the Smestow Brook. That revealed a first area with patches of elf cups which had previously been completely hidden by undergrowth and detritus.
As we walked the full length of the Paddock, there were more and more elf cups between the footpath and the Smestow, and smaller numbers on the other side of the path.
At Meccano Bridge, we came down to canal level. As we returned towards Newbridge, there were a lot of patches of elf cups on the embankment which separates the canal from the Smestow. In the course of a short walk, we trhink it’s likely we got to see over a thousand of these fruiting bodies altogether.