Tony Hardware's Fungi Finds: September 2020

The rains in September certainly helped as I thought we would be in for another dry early Autumn. Starting in Pencarrow Woods, I went to one of my favourite spots under Spruce in case of Cortinarius emerging and came upon two species very quickly. C. raphanoides was the first with just a few around and then even more surprising, although well known but they are still uncommon, came across many C. rubellus or Deadly Webcap. Lovely fungi though, they have a very delicate scaly centre of the cap, which helps ID. a few days later more Cortinarius with C. bolaris, this time with a Pardosa sps of spider jumping onto the cap when taking a photograph, making it even more interesting. Nearby were a group of C. lepidopus, which took some identification and in the end enough features were gathered. I found an unusual resupinate which worked out at home as a Tormentella sps - probably T. umbrinospora due to spore shape and size. Again, a few days after this I visited Dunmere Woods as they are so local to me. Not much seen and looking at a clump of Bracken I didn't expect much else. However, on a dead stem of bracken, I found a resupinate which turned out to be a very rare species Leptosporomyces galzinii. Probably because it's invisible unless you forage under bracken dead stems and who wishes to do that all the time. Another local trip took me down the southern part of the Camel Trail near Hellandbridge. Here under damp cliffs I found Cystolepiota seminuda, not rare but delightful to find here. Nearby, and finding minute ascos on a wet ash looking branch, once again under the microscope, turned into Epishaeria fraxinicola. Very rare, probably 1st for SW Eng., but unmistakable. Then on a single Pinus sylvestris rotting cone another asco Pezizella chionea - also rarely seen and identified. At Trago Mills woodland walk a rare Cortinarius balteatocumatilis was found - another beautiful fungus not seen often. 1st for West Counties. Virtually invisible, I found minute whitish sticks coming off a popular branch which became Phaeoisaria clavulata.