Tony Hardware's Fungi Finds: April 2025

It goes to show that treating your wife to a special day out at the Zoo can lead you to all sorts of possibilities of finding fungi. Well on March 3rd while at Exmoor Zoo, Devon (we love this place) I noticed an unusual pattern of small ascomata on a Bamboo stick I found by the pathway from a stand of Phyllostachys aurea. Somehow I had correctly identified this species of Bamboo but the unusual 'specks' on this one example would prove to the finding of a new GENUS! for Europe and probably well beyond. Following my initial morphological findings and asking for help to identify this most interesting genus, I was advised by the Pyrenomycetes master himself Jacques Fournier (JK)(France) that this could well be a Spirodecospora species. You can see where the name comes from by looking at the ascospores. These have quite unique spiral curvature lines, some would say Germ-slits, but this would be proved incorrect later. A paper published in Japan in 2022, suggested that this was S. melnikii, and after JK input we agreed that this is most probably this species. Now out for DNA sequencing I await confirmation of this or another species, but there are only five world-wide. More to come on this next month. Back to earth, a patch of mould like fungus on oak became Paradendryphiopsis cambrensis. New for the SWest of England. On Betula at Painswick Beacon another hyphomycete would be Monodictys paradoxa - 1st record for Gloucs. From Cirencester Park a fragile, longitudinal-basidia species with subglobose spores was Basidiodendron eyrei and with few other county records. A quick visit for the first time to Ozleworth Park in the south where I found the almost invisible Peniophora proxima, a thin ochre tight resupinate on Box. Few other records. While here I found my first Sarcoscypha coccinea or Ruby Elfcup on Corylus at the bottom of the valley near a stream that I could definitely say was this species after careful scope work for the straighter hairs. Back at Cirencester Park under a fallen Abies alba branch found Amylostereum chailletii, 3rd for Gloucs. At a new site for me near the village of Saul, close to the Severn, I wondered inland to the start of the River Frome. Here I found a gorgeous Salix enclosure with dead water, which was protected from the heat and had debris everywhere. Lovely! Here was Neobulgaria lilacina growing in small tiny individual apothecia, close by also Lasiobelonium variegatum, 2nd for Gloucs (but after me - dam I'm in the way again). Lastly, a small growth of a bright yellow resupinate on a Salix branch ended up as Phlebia subochracea and 1st for Gloucs also. Nice round up of the month from an exciting start. The weather is turning hot and going out on 30th March found absolutely nothing!