I usually walk on by the boletes. The slugs and the insects have often found them first and they're half-eaten, well-slimed and maggot-ridden by the time I get to them. Not to mention mostly very similar-looking! (To the untrained eye...)
But these scarlet boletes were too stunning to ignore.
They were growing in a little cluster, popping up through the grass at the edge of a field bordered by mature oak trees.
When handled, the lemon yellow pores bruised deep blue.
I had a quick flick through my field guide and found they fitted the description for Ruby Bolete Hortiboletus rubellus perfectly. Right down the the habitat: "in grass with oaks". We found more fruit bodies growing in little clusters along this path.
It wasn't until I got home and checked against descriptions of H. rubellus in British Boletes (Kibby, 2016) and on the first-nature website that I realised identification might be a little more complicated than I'd first thought... There are several similar-looking species – especially when you look at the worldwide fungus flora and consider what new species could perhaps have arrived in Britain, unannounced.
My specimen showed the pale yellowish flesh flushing blue in the cap and upper stipe, which Geoffrey Kibby lists as a distinguising feature of H. rubellus.
I thought I'd better also check the spores, which I found to be "smooth and non-truncate".
The size was also right for H. rubellus as the sample I measured averaged out at 11.6 x 4.8 microns.
I think this is enough information to confirm this find as Ruby Bolete Hortiboletus rubellus. But I shall retain a specimen in the Blencowe Fungarium – just in case.
There weren't masses of mushrooms around, but I did come across quite a few of these, growing in one of the damper spots under a blackthorn / hawthorn hedge.
The young caps were fringed with the remains of a veil.
I thought they were growing up from the soil at first, but on closer inspection I realised they were attached to a fragment of buried wood.
I spent ages with the microscope, puzzling over what these could be, and have come to the conclusion they're probably Pale Brittlestem Psathyrella candolleana. Again.
And we finished the day with a few Glistening Inkcaps Coprinellus micaceus, gracing an old stump.
For the record
Date: 19 August 2018
Location: Private site near Dial Post
Grid reference: TQ1420
Records entered into FRDBI 07/09/2018
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