Tony Hardware's Fungi Finds: April 2024

The most interesting find this month was something I and many others couldn't identify. This was a deep yellow hairless discomycete growing on a dead Carex species on the ground at the edge of a arable field. At first I thought this should be easy, but with five different types of paraphyses, many hooked and no hairs this proved difficult. In the end I sent it for sequencing at a Company in Spain where they have an excellent service at a reasonable price and you don't have to go to the back of the queue, a very long, long one if trying at one of the few places in the UK where citizen scientists can sometimes get a response. Mostly impossible - well someone had to say it! I wait for news on this species as I write and will report the outcome next month. I'm sure all my two other readers of my blog can't wait to hear.

I believe this is in and around Calycellina but we will see. Next interesting find was by accident. I went to Crickley Hill NR for coffee, views etc for a change with my wife and didn't expect to find anything except a very nice flapjack they sell there. While waiting for my wife where she needs to go, I stood on the road and casually picked up an Ash twig off the nearest bank. The arrangement of the ascomata looked interesting and on checking this became Cryptovalsa protracta, only the 4th record in the UK! Unbelievable! Easily identified as well owing to 32-spored asci. A slime mould was found on Pinus at Painswick Cemetery, a little worse for wear which occurs a lot for this type of class of pseudo-fungi, as they aren't fungi. After working with very little information John Holden (Forest of Dean) helped me identify this as Diderma spumariodes. Not uncommon but all the same difficult to identify. A hyphomycete that looked like a sooty mould became Digitodesmium elegans at Merchants' Down Woods. This would be 1st for Gloucs. Found an dead grass of what appeared to be Agropyron caninum was a rare Phaeosphaeria pontiformis, identified due to the quantity of septa with the spore structure, which is fairly unique. This would be 3rd record for the UK!. At the lovely ancient woodland of Climperwell Woods, a delightful location not visited by many, which makes it all the more attractive when I want to eat my sandwiches in peace. Under a damp and so near-stream old fallen Aldus branch I found a single but large jelly fungus type but pinkish. This turned into Ombrophila violacea under the scope. 1st for Gloucs. An innocuous corticoid fungus on what appeared to be old Popular branches at Highnum Church (NW Gloucester) from an amazing line of very tall trees became Phanerochaete tuberculata thanks to broad ellipsoid spores and encrusted hyphae and hymenium context. This would be 1st for Gloucs as well as most of western England. Again an unusual ascomata arrangement this time on a dead Nettle stem at nearby Bowbridge fields produced amazing straited spores, which I knew must be something interesting, even if they were just black dots!!. In time I worked this out to be Phomatospora berkeleyi, 3rd for Gloucs but after my previous find last year! Which I had forgotten about! On a visit to Burford Garden Centre I picked up a dead stem from an unknown Iris species and later found Pleospora phaeocomoides growing. This would be the 2nd record for Oxon.