Treraven Woods, Wadebridge - 24th January 2019

Time for a short foray into my local woods on a drizzly afternoon, but once on the Camel Trail you tend to be covered most of the way and of course when in the woodland. I first came upon a colony of the delightful colourful Sarcoscypha austriaca or Scarlet Elfcup under a canopy of mossy hazel, some on twigs others on soil. I tested for the rarer S. coccinea without conviction and the spores pointed to the former as you would expect. Further up the trail an isolated rotting beech log deserved a second look underneath and I was rewarded with the tiny white cups of Lachnum sps. These needed inspection at home under the microscope and once completed the less common L. brevipilosum showed itself, especially due to the substrate it grew upon and the size of hairs on the cups themselves (see enlargement at x40. Wondering further up the track at the hill top the woodland disappears and you enter a local youth education nature centre. Here I saw a brilliant large wood chip pile and my expectations shot up. Sure enough a whole array of different shaped Peziza vesiculosa or Blistered Cup was growing amongst the wood chippings. At the rear of the stack I located a few additional agarics in the shape of Psathyrella, and these turned out to be P. corrugis or Red Edged Brittlestem. Not surprising as they love this type of habitat. My eyes widen even further when coming across a large single mushroom growing out of the wood chip but on inspection had a longish rooting stem, thick stem with heavy veil remnants and veil still attached to the cap, and a surprising scented smell at first which disappeared quickly. This took me ages to see what this could be searching through tons of literature and online where I couldn't find anything that contained a large rooting stem that was anything like the rest of the macro features. This was answered through my colleague and Chair of the Cornwall Recording Group, Pauline Penna, who suggested Agrocybe rivulosa, as being seen regularly on wood chip and matched most of the features of this specimen. This turned out to be only the 5th for the county, Pauline seeing two of these this century! Apparently spreading in the UK due to the use of imported wood chip across gardens.

Agrocybe rivulosa - Wrinkled Fieldcap on wood chip

Agrocybe rivulosa veil attachment

Agrocybe rivulosa

Agrocybe rivulosa spores

Lachnum brevipilosum cup fungi

Lachnum brevipilosum
showing hair length

Sarcoscypha austriaca - Scarlet Elfcup

Sarcoscypha austriaca showing
paraphyses with red granules

Peziza vesiculosa - Blistered Cup on wood chip

Peziza vesiculosa

Psathyrella corrugis - Red Edged Brittlestem

Psathyrella corrugis older examples

Hawkes Wood, Nr Wadebridge - 4th January 2019

Time to seek out what has been growing in my local patch and so I visited Hawkes Wood, a Cornwall Wildlife Trust site near to where I live once again. I have pulled together a database of all species my colleagues that I have accompanied or found myself have found in this delightful woodland. This presently stands at 64 species, not bad for a fairly small site, some of which were firsts' for Cornwall and one today made it into a top ten listing for the UK!  I started by checking out my favourite wood chip pile close to the entrance of the reserve and wasn't disappointed again, not only were Stropharia aurantiaca (Redlead Roundhead) still in full bloom (this is January!) and spread liberally around the site but I noticed some small new mushrooms appearing from within the wood chip on the ground. These turned out to be Tubaria furfuracea (Scurfy Twiglet), new for me, and unusual as normally found inside woodland on woody litter, but were obviously happy here finding a deliciously rotting wood chip, even if in a farmer's field. The highlight of the day turned up in the NE corner of the site on a rotting oak log on the ground where I noticed protruding extensions coming out of the log at 90 degs. After careful examination with a few specimens at home and help from keys of Xylaria by Peter Fournier, I was able to identify the tiny fruiting bodies as Xylaria cinera. This has been recorded in Cornwall before but more or less only here, as there are very few other recorded findings elsewhere in the UK. Another special species for this fungi rich county. Lastly, I found a unusual looking respuinate which had cobweb features and margins of rhizomorphs. Checking afterwards at home the spore detail produced exceedingly small subsph. spores and along with the fact that this was growing on moss on oak and other keys pointed towards another first for Cornwall in Trechispora cohaerens.

Xylaria cinera on oak log

Xylaria cinera on oak log (6th for Cornwall)

Single specimen of Xylaria cinera

Cut flesh showing where the spores in
the inner wall section are stored.

Tubaria furfuracea - Scurfy Twiglet on wood chip

Tubaria furfuracea gills

Trechispora cohaerens (1st for Cornwall)

Trechispora cohaerens spores 1000x

hypoxylon fragiforma - Beech Woodwart