Saprobic on dead and decaying stumps and logs of broadleaves, especially beech; also on buried wood

Inedible — too small and tough to be of any culinary value

• ▸ Antler- or club-shaped, flattened, often branched fruit bodies like a tiny stag's horn
• ▸ Black, carbonaceous surface with powdery whitish-grey tips while young
• ▸ The pale tips darken as the sexual fruit bodies mature
• ▸ Grows in dense tufts on dead hardwood stumps and logs

One of the most common decomposers of hardwood; the pale 'snuff' on the tips is the asexual conidial stage, which turns to sooty black as the perithecia mature.