scarlet elf-cup
Sarcoscypha coccinea latin

They may be vividly colored, like the scarlet cup (Sarcoscypha coccinea), which is often one of the first signs of spring where it grows.

It is part of a complex of species which includes Sarcoscypha coccinea and Sarcoscypha dudleyi.

Germination requires only 1.5 hours, a relatively short time compared to another inoperculate species in the same family, Sarcoscypha coccinea, which requires 48 hours.

Sarcoscypha coccinea was given its current name by Jean Baptiste Émil Lambotte in 1889.

Sarcoscypha coccinea was used as a medicinal fungus by the Oneida Indians, and possibly by other tribes of the Iroquois Six Nations.

A saprobic species, Sarcoscypha coccinea grows on decaying woody material from various plants: the rose family, beech, hazel, willow, elm, and, in the Mediterranean, oak.

In 1928, Fred Jay Seaver overturned Saccardo's naming and applied the name Plectania to Sarcoscypha coccinea and other red cup fungi.

Sarcoscypha coccinea is the type species of the genus Sarcoscypha, having been first explicitly designated as such in 1931 by Frederick Edward Clements and Cornelius Lott Shear.

Sarcoscypha coccinea, commonly known as the scarlet elf cup, scarlet elf cap, or the scarlet cup, is a species of fungus in the family Sarcoscyphaceae of the order Pezizales.

It has been frequently confused with Sarcoscypha coccinea, but can be distinguished from this and other related species in Sarcoscypha by differences in microscopic characteristics, such as the presence and number of oil droplets in the spores.

Sarcoscypha coccinea is one of several fungi whose fruit bodies have been noted to make a "puffing" sound-an audible manifestation of spore-discharge where thousands of asci simultaneously explode to release a cloud of spores.

These features distinguishes this species from the rather similar Sarcoscypha coccinea and Sarcoscypha jurana It is reported to grow on the dead wood of such hosts as Alnus incana, species of Salix, Acer and Robinia.