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

Saturday, 3 May 2025

APRIL 2025 - Uncommon to rare species recorded this month

Another interesting month even if one of the hottest with a couple of rare Mollisias on unusual substrates. While taking in the sights at Burford Garden Centre and on exit I spotted a dead stem of a small 'curly topped' Bamboo plant I have never seen before. I am still trying to find out what it is and will need another visit I would imagine. Wonderful place in case you have never been there. On this I identified Alternaria infectoria which would be 2nd for Oxfordshire. Towards the end of the month during a visit to Brimsfield woods/stream I found Brunnipila fusescens. Not that uncommon but added here as such a lovely fungus seen here at x40! During a BioBash survey at Westonbirt Arboretum along with my fungi friend Laura Dutton we found Fibroporia gossypium (was Antrodia) under a massive fallen Douglas Fir tree trunk, this would be 1st for Gloucs and 20th for the UK. Very soft large pored resupinate, with seeping resin and pungent smelling strongly mushroomy odour. It was almost at this same spot that under a unusual species of tree Cercidiphyllum japoniclum (which you would expect in an Arboretum) I found very tiny apothecia of a Molllisia species with everything suggesting this was M. ulicis. 2nd for the UK. I would normally try to obtain DNA evidence at this rarity status, unfortunately as each ascomata was less than 0.5mm this soon became next to nothing on drying and I was unable to take this forward. A short visit to one of my favourite spots at Climperwell Woods and stream brought me to Mollisia luctuosa growing on a Pendulous Sedge stem. This has large pointy 1-septate spores and clavate hairs. This being 1st for Gloucs. Also here and growing on an unknown well rotten broadleaf branch poking out of the water were an ascomycete I thought visually were a Rosellinia species and thought twice about bothering to gather and identify. I did, and glad I did as this became the unbelievably named Kirshsteiniothelia aethiops which has large two-celled spores and is quite rare. 4th for the UK in fact.