Stemonitis fusca - joss sticks for forest fairies?

Slime moulds are interesting organisms but you couldn't really describe them as being beautiful (one of the commonest bears the name 'dog's vomit slime mould') - but this one is a little different. When Stemonitis fusca has finished crawling around and feeding in its plasmodial stage it enters its sporing stage and produces these cinnamon coloured structures, about a centimetre high. You can find   a wonderful movie of it on YouTube.

I've found it on a number of occasions on dead wood in forest plantations in Weardale. On the first occasion when I showed them to my kids (many years ago, when they were very young!) they were convinced they were looking at  'sparkler' fireworks for the forest fairies. Once they got to their teenage years they revised their opinion and claimed they were joss sticks for the forest fairies, who had clearly developed become hippies in the intervening years...........