Self-indulgent re-branding exercise

 Introducing: Enjoying Field Mycology ...

Hello, reader! It is always a pleasant surprise to receive any indication that real human beings with whom I might have something in common are reading this blog, as I did recently. 

Somebody was kind enough to comment that perhaps 'misidentifying fungi' is a misnomer for the kind of content I've been sharing with the world the past few years. So ... time for a rebrand!

You can find my latest post over on substack: 

https://enjoyingfieldmycology.substack.com/

(I don't really know what I'm doing or where I'm going with this, so bear with...)

 

Ta ta for now, and thanks for reading my blog.

Clare

Rusty Threefer

 

'Tis the season for having a go at botany: one fungal substrate at a time. 

If you zoom right in on this sickly-looking Periwinkle (Vinca sp.) then you can just make out a hairy edge to the leaves...

I think this makes today's plant Greater Periwinkle Vinca major. 

And if I've got that right, then I think those black pustules scattered generously across its leaves are one of the life stages of the rust fungus Puccinia vincae. 

Under the stereo microscope (image below) you can see the hairy margin of the leaf nicely and I think the orange specks are 'stage 0' of the fungus's lifecycle: the spermogonia. The black specks are 'stage I': the aecia.

One or two of the leaves are showing these gingery-coloured pustules, 'stage II': the uredinia.

That gingery-coloured stuff is actually a mass of urediniospores, pictured here at 100x magnification (image is of a cross-section through one of those pustules):

This is what the urediniospores look like at 40x magnification.

I really had to hunt for 'stage III', but eventually managed to track down a few solitary teliospores (one pictured below at 1000x magnification).

I read on the fungi.org.uk forum that the teliospores of Puccinia vincae look like peanuts, which gave me some motivation to fiddle around with oil immersion and a bit of focus-stacking. And I have to agree, it does look like a peanut.

***

That might have been the end of my study of Puccinia vincae but, what do we have here? 

 

Some ashy-grey looking pustules (or, 'sporodochia'?):

I think this gives us the threefer! (If I am correct) what we have here is another fungus: Tuberculina sbrozzii, parasitising the rust fungus Puccinia vincae which is itself a biotrophic parasite on the Greater Periwinkle Vinca major.  

These ashy-grey sporodochia are structurally very different to the uredinia I was looking at earlier. Here is an image of one in cross-section at 100x magnification. 

The outer surface is covered in little round conidia.

Here are a load I scooped out from the middle of a sporodochium, at 400x magnification:

You can see that they are clear, or 'hyaline', and when I measured them they were about 10 microns in diameter - which is the right ballpark for Tuberculina sbrozzii.

 

For the record

Date: 8 April 2023

Private site in East Sussex

(Records will be entered into iRecord in due course.)

Spring is in the air (and in that pile of decaying debris)

At Sussex Wildlife Trust's Woods Mill nature reserve, at the far end of the lake, near the stream, there is a pile of decaying flood debris. Little bits of sticks and leaves, and old bits of reeds and sedge. On top of this pile there was one thing that was covered in miniscule white specks:

 ... a decaying catkin. After close inspection, I'm pretty sure it's one of last year's Goat Willow catkins. 

Photo of Goat Willow catkin, borrowed from tcv.org.uk: https://treegrowing.tcv.org.uk/identify/goatwillow

The white specks swarming over the dead catkin didn't look like much to the naked eye. They didn't even look like much under a hand lens. But under the stereomicroscope they are rather lovely.

The fertile surface of the tiny cup-shaped fruit bodies (none of them more than 0.5mm across), fringed with hairs, fairly sparkle under the light. 

The whole outer surface is covered in hairs, giving a downy appearance.

Under the microscope, they've got avocado shaped spores.

... and the asci, stained with Lugol's iodine, are showing a blue (amyloid) reaction at the tip.

It's been a long time since I looked at ascos, but I think that means the asci are inoperculate and the bit that's turned blue is the apical ring. 

My tech set-up isn't fully cooperating this evening, so I haven't been able to measure anything...  

But I reckon I might be able to identify this collection??? Cyathicula amenti (= Crocicreas amenti) fits the habitat and morphological characteristics. And according to 'Microfungi on Land Plants' by Ellis & Ellis, it's "common" in March to April.

For the record

Date collected: 18 March 2023

Location: Woods Mill, West Sussex