Tony Hardware's Fungi Finds: AUGUST 2026 - Uncommon to rare species this month

Well if I thought July was bad, then the driest August ever suggested I would not be adding anything this month! However, I decided to find water wherever accessible and so started a new summer trend of stream walking and finding limestone spring outlets. They are all on the Ord. Survey maps. This worked out well as I found many water based species, mostly those completely submerged which is always intriguing, as where do the spores go. Onto the next branch under water I guess. I found Adelphella babingtonii twice during the month, the first at Somerford Keynes, where I was River chasing, waiting to find where the Thames started but miles lower down from the source at Thames Head, which these days is always dry anyway. Looking closely at the pansies growing outside my front door I spotted what appeared to be some sort of mould growing on dead leaves. Looking at this I found the hyphomycete Alternaria violae on Viola x-wittrockiana flower leaves. This would be the 2nd UK record only! But then who else puts their nose into the depths of their pansies. From a visit to Cirencester Park I examined Horse manure (also immune from the sun as it comes from where the 'sun doesn't shine') after a 7 day culture and found Ascobolus perplexans. Not common. At my local haunt at Capel's Mill by the River Frome I sat with my wellies in the water and just picked around at the sticks in and out of the water. Most of the time I spent just walking with normal boots on, the streams suffer also. Ascocoryne lilacina would be one found (5th Gloucs.) and Hydropisphaera peziza with remarkable seriate spores (in water). At Climperwell Woods and still with a stream was Lachnum tenuipilosum on Carex pendula - 8th UK/1st Gloucs record. A stream visit to Leasowes Woods brought me Miladina lecithina but also a rare myxo in Stemonitopsis amoena and would be just 4th UK record!! This was on an overhanging branch, not in water as I doubt this would survive like ascos. A quick visit to my local Bowbridge Carr and stream found the ugly Pandora dipterigena all over a very dead fly. Lastly, another stream walk this time at Chevington Woods (entrance) I found Phaeohelotium flexuosum, Stegonsporium coelomycete and best of all Thecotheus rivicola (5th UK record!) and (found at two different locations) after consulting Nicolas van Voorden in Belgium. So still an exciting month thanks to perseverance and the fungi that allowed itself to be found.