Fruit-body: shape depending on the length of grass in which it grows but always branching strongly from its base, composed of a dense compact tuft of egg-yellow or orange-tawny branches which are either irregular or of equal length and so they form a flattened top to the fruit-body complex, the branchlets are slender, forked 2- or 3-times, with their apices narrowed or curved.
Stem: very downy at the base.
Flesh: pale yellow.
Spore-print: white.
Spores: medium sized, hyaline under the microscope, smooth, spherical and 5-7 µm in diameter, not becoming bluish grey in iodine solutions.
Cystidia: absent.
Habitat & Distribution: Common amongst grass in fields or on grassy path sides in woodland.
General Information: Clavulinopsis corniculata is recognised by the branched habit and the smooth spores; Ramaria ochraceo-virens is of similar form, but has an overall duller colour and turns green on bruising, grows in pinewoods and has finely roughened brownish spores. Calocera viscosa also has an erect, bright golden or orange-yellow fruit-body which becomes more orange on drying. It is repeatedly branched and usually has a long, tough-rooting base. However, the spore-print is dirty yellowish and the fruit-body, which grows on coniferous wood, is viscid and elastic, a character reflected in the name ‘viscosa’. Microscopically the basidium of Calocera is shaped like a tuning-fork and is not clavate as in Clavulinopsis corniculata. It appears to be more related to the jelly-fungi (see [p. 180]).
Illustrations: Clavulinopsis corniculata—LH 55; NB 6; WD 1043. Calocera viscosa—Hvass 304; LH 225; NB 1493; WD 1078.