Clavulina vinaceocervina (Dark-tipped Coral)

Pat & Ed Grey (see references) report the fruitbodies as "large, contorted or irregularly branched, pink to fawn, but there are always some with dark tips".  They may be up to 10 centimetres tall, the branches may be flattened, they have blunt or pointed tips and are wrinkled or grooved. Petersen (1983) says that some areas (such as the apices) stain a darker reddish brown on bruising.

The fruitbodies appear on the ground in woodlands or forests.

Look-alikes

Clavulina cinerea fruitbodies grow to the same size and may have wrinkled or grooved branches. In Latin cinereus means ash-coloured and in this species the fruitbodies are commonly grey (from VERY pale to dark). However, some sources also mention greyish brown to purplish tinges or picture specimens with markedly darker tips. Grey shades are easy to distinguish from pinkish-brown ones, but as you go to greyish brown or darker fawn, differentiation becomes harder. Also, lighting, weathering or ageing of specimens may cause difficulties in deciding between cinerea and vinaceocervina.

The dark tips

In his original description, Cleland (1931, as Clavaria vinaceo-cervina) did not mention darker tips, simply saying "Vinaceous Pink (xxviii) at the tips", a reference to the colour labelled Vinaceous Pink by Ridgway (1912, plate xxviii). Cleland (1934-35) wrote of some specimens which "seem to merely drab-coloured forms of this species" but thought they were the older species Clavaria cinerea (now Clavulina cinerea) and in his comments about cinerea, included the words "the tips blackish" when dry. His other colour notes make one wonder if some of the specimens he thought of as cinerea were in fact vinaceocervina. No thorough study of Australian Clavulinas has been published. The most detailed is by Petersen (1983), who starts by saying his account is "so preliminary as to be almost premature".

References

Cleland, J.B. (1931), Australian fungi: Notes and descriptions. - No. 8, Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of South Australia, 55, 152-160.

Cleland, J.B. (1934-35), Toadstools and mushrooms and other larger fungi of South Australia, Government Printer, Adelaide.

Grey, P. & E. (2021), A little book of corals (revision 6). Freely available at: https://www.fncv.org.au/a-little-book-of-corals/.

Petersen, R.H. (1983), Notes on clavarioid fungi XVIII. A preliminary outline of Clavulina in Southeastern Australia, Nova Hedwigia, 37, 19-35.

Ridgway, R. (1912), Color standards and color nomenclature, privately published, Washington D.C. Available online at https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/colorstandardsc00ridg - but how accurately will the colours show on your monitor?