Near Spithandle Lane

We finished work early on Tuesday to fit in a fungi walk before dinner and drove out, past Beggars Bush, to Spithandle Lane.

Sprouting up from the edge of Spithandle Lane we spotted this. Ridiculous!

And nearby, another fruit body which had spread its gills and now stood proud, above the woodland floor.

These look like the Parasol Macrolepiota procera; the brown scales on the stem, giving it a snakeskin-like appearance, are a key characteristic.

Nearby, this mushroom was also hard to miss.

Underneath the cap, a partial veil entirely covered its gills.

It looked so utterly perfect, I was reluctant to start poking at it to discover more of its features. Perhaps it's a beautiful white Death Cap Amanita phalloides var. alba. I should have at least sniffed it, to see if I could detect its sweet deathly scent.

Our route took us south, through mixed woodland, and I was soon overwhelmed by the number of fungi fruiting here.

Little Brown Jobs, Russulas and most of the samey-looking Boletes were brazenly ignored; while I scanned the woodland floor for fruit bodies I might have a cat-in-hell's chance of identifying.

Aha! One I think I know: Oak Curtain Crust Hymenochaete rubiginosa.

And one I definitely don't know. But which was too pretty to pass by. 

I noticed fragments of... veil (?) hanging from the edges of the rounded white cap.

Not sure what genus I'm in with this one: Psathyrella? Perhaps a young Pale Brittlestem Psathyrella candolleana. I moved on.

I found this mushroom growing amongst the leaflitter: Amethyst Deceiver Laccaria amethystina.

I wondered if this emerging mushroom might be a Tawny Grisette Amanita fulva. A volva 'flushed with cap colour' is characteristic of this species.

On a rotting log I spotted these flat fruit bodies.

Underneath: pores.

It looks like there are also the remains here of a dead and blackened stipe, perhaps of a previous generation of these fruit bodies. I wonder if these are young specimens of the Blackfoot Polypore Polyporus leptocephalus.

On the same rotting log: YELLOW BLOBS!

I do love a good blob. I felt this must be slime mould plasmodium, for sure, so I took a sample home to see what it would do.

By the time I got home from work the next day, it looked like this:

Photographed down stereomicroscope.

Reddish-brown tubes on stalks. Amazing! Wish I'd seen this in progress.

I believe that makes this one of the Stemonitis species of slime mould. There are a couple which Bruce Ing, in his book 'The Myxomycetes of Britain and Ireland', describes as having yellow plasmodium and occuring on rotten wood:

• Stemonitis axifera
• Stemonitis flavogenita 

They're quite similar! S. flavogenita is reported to have a 'zigzag' at the top of the column ('columella') which supports the spore-bearing structure ('sporangium'). I couldn't see anything like that. But other features, such as the blunt sporangia, do seem to point to S. flavogenita. I think I'll have to pass on this one.

UPDATE 12/08/2017: I've received some very helpful advice from Malcolm Storey, over on the British Slime Moulds (Myxogastria) Facebook Page, on how to check for the presence of that 'zigzag' which is indicative of S. flavogenita. He advises blowing all the spores off and then getting one or two sporangia mounted in water (with a drop of detergent), under a compound microscope. You might need to keep tapping and rinsing it to wash all the spores off.

If it's there, the kink should look like this: 

Copyright © Malcolm Storey, 2002, www.bioimages.org.uk. Some rights reserved.

I had a go at doing this but it seems my specimen is unfortunately now too mangled to determine if it is or isn't kinked.

Further on, where the path took us along the edge of a pasture, with a few oaks growing along the edges, I spotted what I presume is another Inocybe.

A quick up-stipe shot revealed pale-edged gills, like I'd observed on that Inocybe in Horton Wood the other day.

As I got stuck trying to identify the last Inocybe I collected, I thought I wouldn't force myself to attempt another, just yet. So I left this mushroom as I found it.

Michael spotted the large cap of an old Amanita collapsed at the bottom of an oak tree. I think this may be a Blusher Amanita rubescens, but I wouldn't like to say for sure without seeing more of it.

Entering an area of Birch woodland, we were suddenly surrounded by earthballs Scleroderma sp. I'm not 100 % confident identifying earthballs, but I think those coarse scales on the surface might make these Common Earthball Scleroderma citrinum.

A little further on, I noticed this streak of mushrooms which stretched for about a metre to that tree in the background, and then continue for another metre or two on the other side.

I'd decided to ignore Little Brown Jobs but these mushrooms had such a distinctive growing habit, I thought it would be worth stopping for a look.

All along the line, the mushrooms were growing in tightly packed clusters; the long, downy stems actually fused together, up to perhaps a quarter of their length:

Having flicked through the my field guides, I'm going to hazard a guess at Clustered Toughshank Gymnopus (=Collybia) confluens; the field characteristics match the descriptions very well. If I'm right, they should provide a white spore print – I'll see if I can get one (although the mushrooms are now rather dried out).

UPDATE 14/08/2017: Managed to get a spore print from a couple of those clustered mushrooms. Definitely white!

Moving on, into an area of more mixed woodland, a definite Tawny Grisette Amanita fulva.

It was growing next to these mousy-brown mushroom, which had me stumped at first.

But then I saw that they were growing from a chunk of rotting dead wood.

At this point, I decided they were Deer Shield Pluteus cervinus. However, as I am writing this, I notice that the gills in the photograph above are not 'crowded', as you'd expect in P. cervinus. So perhaps I got this one wrong.

We then came across these gorgeous Amanitas growing at the edge of a plantation woodland, with cypresses.

I think this is another example of The Blusher Amanita rubescens.

There were quite a few around. In this specimen, the flawless partial veil still clung to the edges of the cap.

What a beauty.

Moving quickly on, because by this time dinner was calling... Yellow Stagshorn Calocera viscosa. Looking GREAT.

Chanterelle Cantharellus cibarius.

These orange mushrooms were growing out of a pile of rotting logs.

Orange gills makes these one of the Rustgills gymnopilus sp. I think.

I'm going to put my money on Common Rustgill Gymnopilus penetrans.

I saw some more of these – a common sight on my forays this summer: Spindleshank Gymnopus fusipes.

And finally, I should mention the couple of boletes which I decided not to ignore.

There was this one, which I got very excited about.

Which ended up being Chestnut Bolete Gyroporus castaneus, as I established in an earlier blog post.

Then there was this dark, suede-topped beauty growing at the edge of a conifer plantation, which my photos really don't do justice to.

So, what can we see here.

• Cap surface: dry and velvety, almost suede-like.
• Stem: smooth; base colour is yellow, with red dots and longditudinal striations.
• Tubes: when split tear in half lengthways

This takes us to the Xerocomoid boletes in Geoffrey Kibby's 'British Boletes' (2016).

I think that key takes me to Red Cracking Bolete Xerocomellus chrysenteron. The olive-brown spore print would support that identification.

I had the impression that the fruit body I collected was a young specimen (which got knocked around a bit before I had a chance to take the photos above); which might explain why it doesn't show any cracking.

THE END! Ah, I thought I'd been fairly selective in which fungi I stopped to investigate on our Tuesday night foray. It's still taken me most of the week to puzzle my way through them. Now, what will this weekend bring?

For the record
Date: 08/08/2017

Location: Near Spithandle Lane, Ashurst, West Sussex

Grid reference:  TQ11S

Records entered into FRDBI 06/09/2018

Fairy Ring Puffballs

My route to walk took me past a fairy ring this morning; a fairy ring of puffballs!

The bright white fruit bodies were growing around the circumference of a circle; singly and in clumps.

The plump, pillowy white fruit bodies enclosed perfectly white gleba (the spore-bearing inner mass).

The outer surfaces were covered in fine white scales; you can see where they've come off on the grass, next to the fruit body.

I think this may be the Meadow Puffball Lycoperdon pratense.

UPDATE 23/08/2017: Two weeks later and this is what they look like now.

It had to be done:


For the record
Date: 10/08/2017
Location: Road verge, Small Dole
Grid reference: TQ2113

Record entered into FRDBI 06/09/2018

Good day at the office

I was delighted to find these striking waxcaps outside my office window, as I walked into work at Woods Mill, the Sussex Wildlife Trust headquarters, on Tuesday.

At lunchtime, opposite the bike shed, I found a few more. They're quite variable in appearance.

I'm grateful to my colleague Graeme Lyons and Twitter folk, Donal McCarthy and Dawn & Jim, for identifying these as Blackening Waxcap Hygrocybe conica. There's an interesting write up of this species on the first-nature website.

I popped back at lunchtime today for another look and that one by the bike shed is clearly starting to blacken.

Apparently they soon turn black all over.

For the record
Date: 08/08/2017
Location: Woods Mill, Henfield
Grid reference: TQ218137

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

Please enjoy this blog, in which I almost convince myself I've found a bolete never-previously-recorded-in-Britain. Until I am put straight by the good people of the British Mycological Society (BMS) Facebook page... 

I've been agonising over a boletus I collected this evening.

I think I've narrowed the identification down to EITHER the common and widespread Bay Bolete Imleria badia OR (and this is my favoured option, if I'm honest) the never-previously-recorded-in-Britain Imleria heteroderma.

Here they are illustrated in Geoffrey Kibby's 'Mushrooms and Toadstools of Britain & Europe Volume 1' (2017).

So first, a confession. I don't have good notes on where this bolete was growing. We were in a rush – looking for a set of lost car keys – and I spotted this bolete which looked different to the ones I've seen before. I quickly grabbed a specimen, so I could have another go at working through the keys in Kibby's 'British Boletes' (2016).

The mushroom was growing at the edge of a conifer plantation. There were a few fruiting bodies dotted about, which I assumed to be all the same species. I selected one of the younger-looking ones to take home.

It looks like this (squares in the background are 5 mm):

The cap is orangey-brown in colour and feels like a very fine chamois leather.

Underneath the cap, the pores are cream; they don't bruise at all:

The tubes look like this in cross-section.

The stipe looks like this: concolourous but paler than the cap. It's smooth, with no discernable patterning. Although I think I can see some minute dots  around the central (darker) part of the stipe.

The flesh is whitish, with absolutely no colour-change when cut.

The smell is pleasant: mushroom-y.

I've got to say – so far it's a great match for Imleria heteroderma, until you get to the bit that says:

"Under cedars in the Mediterranean, not yet British but might occur in the southern counties. Described in 1969 this species has remained almost forgotten until recently redescribed. It is close to Boletus [= Imleria] badius but differs in both colour and structure of the cap cuticle hyphae. In B. heterodermus the end cells are covered in small encrustations of plaques which stain in Congo Red dye." 

Dammit. I haven't got any Congo Red dye.

Let's have a look at the cap cuticle hyphae anyway...

At 400x magnification, mounted in water, they look like this:

I am convinced I can see small crustations on those hyphae. Especially in that bottom micrograph. Although it's entirely possible what I'm seeing is dust on the lens.

I shall try and seek expert opinion!

UPDATE 09/08/2017 ~ Having received some very helpful comments from Neil Mahler and Geoffrey Kibby, over on the BMS Facebook page, it's now very clear that this bolete is the Chestnut Bolete Gyroporus castaneus. 

The hollowing of the stipe is a key characteristic. 

On the plus side, I was at least right about one thing: it is different to any of the boletes I've seen before. 

For the record

Date: 08/08/2017

Location: Near Spithandle Lane, Ashurst, West Sussex [private site]

Grid reference:  TQ11S

Record entered into FRDBI 06/09/2018