This purple jellydisc fungus was growing on a felled tree trunk in the Northycote Farm Local Nature reserve back in 2015. It’s one of many fungi species which feeds off dead wood, helping to recycle it.
It’s also a species which reproduces by spreading two different types of spores. At different times of year the same individual fungus produces spores asexually and sexually, the former leading to clones of the originating fungus. The clonal pores are released from brownish fruiting bodies in spring, the so-called perfect form with sexual spores as autumn becomes winter.