Tony Hardware's Fungi Finds: Rare to uncommon species Mid-October

Visit to Sheba Woods, near Callington produced some very unusual sightings. This included Chromocyphella muscicola a very small cyphelloid fungus growing on moss, Baeospora myosura or Conifercone Cup, a few unusual Incocybes with I. fuscidula and I. whitei showing itself in a mature state of orangey/red whereas most see it white when younger. The best of all and 1st for the West Country was Hebeloma pseudoamarscens, growing on an old fire site by a river. While being very idle and avoiding the shopping at Sainsbury's in Bodmin so searching the small grassy pathway nearby found Cortinarius decipiens. A short visit to my favourite spot in Pencarrow Woods (conifer section) came across the beautiful blood red webcap as its common name suggests Cortinarius sanguineus. Gorgeous. Another shopping trip, this time to Par Market near St Austell I checked out a grassy knoll and came across a Russula looking like a Lactarius but ended up as 1st for Cornwall in R. cuprea. Amazing what you can find if you keep looking. A survey at a private site near St Teath proved amazing where I was able to identify 11 waxcap species with the owner of the natural grasslands he looks after but also finding Stropharia caerulea or Blue Roundhead but where the gills remained blue/green. Very odd. A quick rain soaked visit to Dunmere Woods produced Cortinarius obtusus in among the needle litter/moss and the best of all and 1st for SWest England - Postia wakefieldiae, showing a conifer stump covered in this small overlapping bracket. Highly unusual. Lastly, in this edition of my Blog, a visit to St Mawgan produced a 1st for me in the small grey myxo. of Arcyria cinerea along with Psathyrella prona, which took some time to isolate after microscopy and the best of all growing out of a bank on soil (an unusual substrate for Flammulaster) in F. grandulosus. Again, difficult until cystidia and spores tested well and was convincing.