Tony Hardware's Fungi Finds: FEBRUARY 2025 - Uncommon to rare species recorded this month.

February can be a little tough to find interesting fungi, but this month went well and also considering I couldn't get out much! (Illness - now over fortunately). I tried a new location at a spot called Bangel Woods, near Upper Kilcott very close to the Sth. Gloucs. borders. Here I found a few interesting species starting with Lachnum fasciculum on Corylus, with its clavate tipped hairs helping the ID. 3rd for Gloucs, but I got in the way with the other two records! Really annoying. A spiny corticoid with pseudocystidia with encrusted tips and globose spores ended up as Steccherium bourdotii and 1st for Gloucs. Two other species with a few records each for the county were Phaeohelotium nobile, a lovely yellow small stalked discomycete and Camaropella lutea, not so pretty and appearing as a black smudge on Fagus. Mid-month and while getting the garden ready for Spring, I found a small asco on our New Zealand Flax and is now called Stemphylium Herbarium. Can be found on various herbaceous plants. Back to Cirencester Park and on Corylus this time an ascomycete which is now called Menispora glauca with angled/bent 1-septate spores, which is quite unusual in itself. This would be 11th UK record and 1st for Gloucs. An innocuous looking resupinate was worth checking as this turned out to be Hypochnicium lyndoniae (was Nodotia) which has parallel stacked hyphae like spines and was found on Prunus. 1st for Gloucs. I took a trip down to West Sussex to see some friends (yes, I have some) and had time for a walk around Slindon Woods, just east of Chichester. Here on Betula under a dead branch I found Fibroporia vaillantii, which would be 1st for this county. An unusual substrate also as mostly on conifer. Also 1st for the county would be the tiny spiny ball like asco called Coniochaeta ligniaria with sword like setae hairs. Also on Betula was Chaetosphaeria innumera, 1st again for WSussex, this has small constricted 1-septate spores with tightly packed clavate asci. An interesting and attractive species with spiny growths out of branches was Eutypella scoparia with a few other local records. Lastly, I took a short trip locally to Rudger's Hill near Edge and where a good amount of Betula grows and also is left to rot if fallen. I found under bark here Gloeocystidiellum clavuligerum, this being 2nd for Gloucs (again I'm in the way).