Cups 2 to 6 cm, smooth scarlet inside, pale and finely felted outside, on a short stalk into a buried twig; it fruits in late winter.
- Size
- Cups 2 to 6 cm across, on a stalk up to 4 cm, often buried.
- Edibility
- Eaten in a few places, but it has little flesh; this atlas is not a guide to eating it.
- Where it grows
- On fallen and half-buried sticks of hazel, willow, elm and other broadleaf trees, in damp woods, from winter into early spring.
- Look-alikes
- Its close relatives Sarcoscypha austriaca, S. dudleyi and S. occidentalis, told apart under the microscope.
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- Family
- Sarcoscyphaceae
- Order
- Pezizales
- Ecology
- A decomposer of fallen wood, one of the first fungi of the year.
- Spores
- White print; spores 26 to 40 by 10 to 12 µm, shot from tiny sacs lining the cup.
- Chemistry
- Its red comes from carotenoids, chiefly plectaniaxanthin and β-carotene.
- Described
- In 1772 by Giovanni Scopoli as Helvella coccinea; Lambotte gave it its current name in 1889.
Commonly associated with
- Elves
- Winter woods
- Table decoration
- Folk names
- Scarlet elf cup, scarlet cup.
In folklore
The Oneida of North America used the dried, powdered cups to stop the bleeding of a newborn's navel. In Victorian Scarborough it was sold with moss and leaves as a table decoration, and in the Jura children used to eat it raw on bread and butter.
Curious fact
When a ripe cup is disturbed it fires its spores all at once in a cloud you can see, sometimes with a faint, audible puff.
Folklore and traditional associations. They vary between sources and are beliefs, not scientific claims.