Plaster fungi
Common names - inkcap, elf cup

Habitat:

Damp brickwork or plaster. They feed on surface detritus or on organic material included in walls, such bituminised felt dpc's or hair contained in old plasters.

Identifying features:

Produce large fruit-bodies, or mycelial growths, which may be mistaken for those of wood-rotting fungi.

Coprinus spp: small white or cream 'mushroom' type fruit-body with black gills on thin stalk, often in clumps. Produces black spores which are often deposited as 'spore print' when fruit-body matures before it shrivels and collapses. In vegetative, non-fruiting (ozonium) stage of life cycle, may cause some decay to hardwood sapwood, for instance to split laths.

Peziza spp: small, pale brown or flesh coloured, cup-shaped fruit-bodies without stalks. Up to 50 mm wide. Pliant when fresh but they break easily with brittle fractures when stressed between the fingers. Hard when dry.

Pyronema domesticum: fruit-bodies small, bright orange, wrinkled and jelly-like. Mycelium profuse, pinkish, but otherwise resembling that of Serpula lacrymans.