Looking out of the window as I type this month’s fungi focus, it is difficult to believe that but a few months ago we were at the tail end of a prolonged and intense heatwave and drought. Now as we plunge towards the depths of midwinter, the traditional mushroom hunting season is already well past its peak. Like heat and dryness, most fungi seem to have little tolerance for frost, snow and ice. But there’s no need to be too pessimistic that it’s all over for another year. There’s still plenty of stuff out in the woods and after several years of writing in these blogs about what can be found in any given month, as far as I’m concerned the season is never really over. “Seek and you shall find” is my chosen mantra when I head out with my camera. In fact, I perversely prefer the winter months to the brief but intense height of the season during September to November, a period that yields so many discoveries that photographing and identifying them all can be onerous and overwhelming, and when the forest floor is so dynamic it is difficult to know what species to make the subject of these monthly focusses. Winter is a great time to concentrate on the less showy side of the fungi kingdom; the crusts and the jellies and the other little things you might not notice until you actively start looking. This is the time to persevere with getting that ever-elusive perfect photo of such commonplace species as Candlesnuff Fungi (Xylaria hypoxylon), for example. It is most likely that in the process, while crouched amongst the crisp leaf litter, your eyes will wander and you’ll end up discovering something else you’d might otherwise never have noticed. Candlesnuff With this end-of-year windup for the winter, I decided to focus on a species that has just emerged over the past month that might be lingering a little longer while we wait for Spring. I’ve written before how jellies such as the Yellow Brain fungus and the various other types some refer to as Witches’ Butter manage to resist regular freezing and defrosting and can be found many months after they first emerge. To the list we might also add Jelly Ears and Tripe Fungi, but also another one I’ve not yet covered, which is the Purple Jellydisc (Ascocoryne sarcoides). These can take a variety of forms, from walnut-sized and brain-like to the more discoid example one might expect from its common name. They start emerging mid to late November, when the temperatures first start dropping, growing in clusters on dead deciduous trunks and branches – often beech but certainly not always – as if oozing from the wood. One might assume from the shape and texture that these are closely related to Yellow Brains and Crystal Brains, but whereas these other jellies are basidiomycetes (producing their spores on external structures), Purple Jellydiscs are ascomycetes (with their spores developing internally in sac-like structures called asci) - again, I’ve regularly covered this crucial taxonomic distinction, such as for example in some detail here. I would label the Purple Jellydisc a very common fungi, in that I’ve found it in every woodland I’ve ever spent much time in, although it is not as conspicuous as the other jellies. Yellow Brains, for example, seem to be appear quickly and fully formed, while Purple Jellydiscs seem to emerge small and grow slowly.  Black Witch I’m not entirely sure they are as durable as these other “true” jellies either; I’ve monitored a single growth of Exidia glandulosa, the Black Witches Butter, for a period of almost half a year, watching it dry, inflate, freeze and defrost through the seasons, but I am not entirely sure if I’ve really ever registered Purple Jellydiscs past January. These are also rather drab in the winter light too, more reddy brown than purple, and more opaque than glistening. They are consequently rather difficult to get a decent photo of, although with artificial lighting one gets a better sense of its blanched beetroot hues and jelly baby-like texture. This should all be enough for the casual nature lover to be able to look at a specimen fitting this basic description and to ascribe a name to it. As usually seems to be the case in mycology however, with the two near identical Yellow Brain species proving the point wonderfully, there are a handful of other species in the Ascocoryne genus that look pretty much exactly the same and share similar environmental niches. To prove this rather maddening point, just a few weeks back, I found a group of purplish discs growing in clusters on a fallen beech trunk that looked nothing like any other Purple Jellydiscs I’d ever found before, but they did fit descriptions of Ascocoryne cylichnium, which has the common name of the Budding Jellydisc. First Nature describes this species as “similar but its fruit bodies remain cup shaped rather than merging into a brain-like form.” So far so good, I thought, and if I didn’t have a microscope in my possession, I would have left it at that. But as First Nature also wrote, that “it can only be identified with certainty by microscopic study of the spores, which are much larger than those of Ascocoryne sarcoides”, I decided to dive in for a better look. At this point, I was also informed of the existence of a couple of further species that looked pretty much the same: Ascocoryne solitaria and Ascocoryne inflata. They could only be distinguished from one another and identified with any conviction through close microscopic scrutiny of specific structural details. Needless to say, they don’t have English common names. Anyway, to cut a long and potentially very tedious story short, I did look at my sample under the microscope and it turned out after all to be your bog standard Purple Jellydisc, Ascocoryne sarcoides, after all. I don’t think there’s much more to add at this point beyond a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all who have read this far!

A fungi fanatic with a camera and a macro lens is never bored outdoors. At least, that’s how I tried to console myself when left stranded at a rural train station in East Kent having just missed my hourly train by a matter of minutes and realising that the next one was delayed by a further half hour. A brief wander around the environs to kill time proved me right when I came across a cluster of small grey mushrooms getting up to 2cm in cap diameter growing amongst the moss on a raised grassy patch at the far end of the platform. The mossy substrate, the indented cap and the widely-spaced gills running down the stem made identification a relatively straightforward business – these were part of the Arrhenia genus, which depending on the species can adopt either a pleurotoid (literally “side-ear form”) form, like the soft brackets we see with oyster mushrooms, or an omphalinoid form, from the Greek word ‘omphalos’ for belly button, with a central stem and decurrent gills running down it and an umbrella-shaped cap with a deep central depression.  [caption id="attachment_39104" align="aligncenter" width="675"] The Moss Navel in classic omphalinoid form with an indented cap and decurrent gills.[/caption] Looking at the spores back at home under the microscope corroborated the initial suspicion that these were Arrhenia rickenii, the Moss Navel, which according to its entry on the First Nature website is “a rarely recorded species, probably due at least in part to its small size and the tendency to be obscured by mosses” – and the fact that it is found in such nondescript liminal places as rural train stations, no doubt. There are numerous species of fungi that can be found growing on moss. Let us for now, however, ignore the tiny disc-like ascomycetes and other even more microscopic “bryophilous fungi” in which the interest is so niche that any information is limited to such specialist sites as this one, and instead focus on a handful of the more obvious mushroom-shaped ones. Most sources will refer to mushrooms such as the Moss Navel as saprophytic, meaning they derive their nutrition from decaying organic material, but with many species associating exclusively with particular species of mosses, many suspect this relationship between fungi and host is probably more complicated, as I alluded to in last month’s post on waxcaps. Yes, to know your bryophilous fungi, you often have to know your bryophytes. And what better place to start than following this link to The British Bryological Society... [caption id="attachment_39105" align="aligncenter" width="675"] The widely-spaced decurrent gills of the Moss Navel.[/caption] The initial issue I had with identifying my find was that different Arrhenia species are found alongside different mosses, and sometimes even lichens. Arrhenia peltigerina, for example, is found alongside the leafy Dog Lichen (Peltigera species), and hence its common name is the Lichen Navel. Arrhenia spathulata, a pleurotoid gill-less species known as the Spatulate Oysterling, is restricted to the moss Syntrichia ruraliformis (“star moss”) found growing on sand dunes or similar environments. The Moss Navel is not so fussy, it seems, which would probably make it one of the more common Arrhenia species, as is the case with another much smaller and orange-coloured omphaloid, the Orange Mosscap (Rickenella fibula). Actually both of these species were once considered, by dint of their shape, to be part of the same genus, with the Moss Navel previously known as Omphalina rickenii before its renaming to the current monicker in 1989, and the Orange Mosscap referred to as Omphalina fibula. [caption id="attachment_39106" align="aligncenter" width="675"] Orange Mosscap[/caption] The Orange Mosscap is a mushroom that is easily missed and just as easily misidentified, with a cap diameter of under a centimetre and often much less than that. Unlike Orange Mosscap, it isn’t just restricted to grassland mosses, such as those found in areas such as damp lawns and graveyards, but is commonly found on moss-covered tree stumps or fallen trunks.  While the cap and stem are orange and slightly translucent (the cap can wash out to a paler colour with age), the gills are white, and if you can get a close enough look at them using either a hand lens or a camera macro lens, you will notice that they are strongly decurrent, running down the slender stem and giving the whole mushroom a nail-shaped form. When up close and personal like this, one will also note that both cap and stem are covered in tiny bristles called cystidia, which are relatively large sterile cells found in the fruit bodies of gilled mushrooms that can aid identification. [caption id="attachment_39107" align="aligncenter" width="675"] The upper cap surface of the Orange Mosscap, covered in fine hairs that can also be seen on the stem.[/caption] The main lookalike mushroom that one is likely to confuse the Orange Mosscap with is the Orange Bonnet (Mycena acicula), whose orange cap ironically makes it the one of the most distinctive of the very difficult Mycena group of mushrooms to identify (see my previous posts on Frosty Bonnets and Rosy Bonnets).  The Orange Bonnet is quite a common find, and again very small, but while it is found in mossy areas, it is deciduous leaf and other woodland litter that is its substrate rather than the moss itself. The cap is pruinose, meaning with a dusty surface, rather than distinctly hairy, but it is the gills one needs to look at – these are adnexed or free rather than decurrent, meaning they are not attached to the stem at all. [caption id="attachment_39111" align="aligncenter" width="675"] The underside of the Orange Bonnet, with the adnexed gills distinguishing it from the decurrent gills of the Orange Mosscap.[/caption] Both Orange Mosscaps and Orange Bonnets have white gills and leave white spore prints, which will distinguish them from the final group of mushrooms to which they might be compared, those in the genus of Galerina. Many of this group fall within the LBM (‘little brown mushroom’) category that most mycologists and forages choose to overlook due to their insignificant size and nondescript appearance, but a few, such as the Moss Bell (Galerina hypnorum), the Veiled Bell (Galerina calyptrata), the Dwarf Bell (Galerina pumila) and the Hairy Leg Bell (Galerina vittiformis) among others, do have small orange caps and are found growing among similar mosses and mossy areas as our previous examples. These posts, incidentally, are not about foraging, but even though these mushrooms are not of a size to make them culinarily worthwhile, I would strongly advise against anyone ingesting them in the vain hope of some other form of more spiritual nourishment. Many Galerina species contain potentially deadly toxins, most notoriously the aptly-named Funeral Bell (Galerina marginata). [caption id="attachment_39110" align="aligncenter" width="675"] The dusty ‘pruinose’ surface of the Orange Bonnet.[/caption] The stem characteristics will provide some help of distinguishing the aforementioned Galerina species from the Orange Mosscaps and Orange Bonnets, and to some extent from one another – they are a lot more fibrous, many with white fibrils running longitudinally down the stipe, and some species have distinct rings around them beneath the cap. The bell-shaped striate cap also marks them out from the omphaloid characteristics of the Orange Mosscap. [caption id="attachment_39109" align="aligncenter" width="675"] A grassland Galerina in moss, possibly a Hairy Leg Bell. Note the fibrous stem and orange gill colour.[/caption] But again, and one cannot emphasise this enough, the best way to work out what you are looking at is to go straight for the gills and spores. Galerina have light orange to rust-brown adnexed gills, neither white nor decurrent, and if you leave them on a piece of paper to get a spore print, the deposit will be accordingly orange to brown, not white. And the fail-proof way of characterising any of these would be to look at the spore size and shape using a microscope and compare against other references such as the First Nature website. This post is essentially an ode to moss and all that live amongst them, to a substrate that in the dampness of Autumn provides a rich host for a number of species and which one might well want to take a closer look at when seeing what’s about in the woods or pastures. [caption id="attachment_39114" align="aligncenter" width="675"] The Orange Mosscap (Rickenella fibula)[/caption]

We are now in the peak season for mushrooms and toadstools, and UK Fungus Day, this Saturday 8th October, seems as good a time as any to get out into nature and have a look at what’s around. But while this blog tends to be woodland related by the very fact of it appearing on this website, when it comes to the role of fungi in our wider ecosystems, it can be easy to miss the wood for the trees. Fungi might have a fairytale association with forests, but we all know that they do grow in other places. Take our most common commercially grown edible, for example, Agaricus bisporus – a fungi so familiar it goes by a plethora of common names, including common, white and chestnut mushroom. The British Mycological Society list ‘Cultivated Mushroom’ as it’s official common name, but when it is found growing naturally, it is almost always on grasslands of some description, just like the larger closely-related Field Mushroom (Agaricus campestris).  So let us take a temporary foray out of the forest into fresh pastures this month, where we shall focus on an eye-catching and particularly interesting group of grassland fungi whose importance to the natural world needs a lot more appreciation and investigation: the waxcaps.  Butter Waxcap (Hygrocybe ceracea) There’s a whole swathe of mushrooms one might see growing in fields and parklands and other grassy areas. Most are saprophytic, growing on decaying organic matter, like such well-known varieties as the Shaggy Inkcap and the majestic Parasol Mushroom, and you might see other types like the Egghead Mottlegill or the Stubble Rosegill growing in animal dung or among hedge cuttings or other organic litter at the edge of fields and pathways. The waxcaps, however, prefer “unimproved” grasslands, by which it is meant that the ground has been left undisturbed and has not been reseeded for some time, it is nutrient poor and has not been dosed with artificial fertilisers, and is most likely used as either permanent pasture or a regular hay cropping.  According to the book ‘Grassland Fungi: A Field Guide’ (2017), by Elsa Wood and Jon Dunkelman, such short-sward, nutrient-poor areas tend to be rich in wildflower species and a good moss flora is present. This latter point is important, because while waxcaps have been thought of both as being saprophytic and mycorrhizal (growing in association with plant roots), current research seems to suggest they grow in association with grassland mosses. Butter Waxcap (Hygrocybe ceracea) amongst the moss As such, waxcaps are incredibly useful environment indicators, and one of the key species types in a system known as CHEGD proposed by a certain E. Rald in Denmark in 1985 for evaluating the conservation value of a given grassland. CHEGD refers to five groups of fungi whose presence signifies a healthy grassland: Clavaroids such as club, coral and spindle fungi; the waxcaps are the H for Hygrocybe (literally meaning “wet head”); Enteloma, or pinkgills; Geoglossum, or earthtongues; and Dermoloma, a genus commonly referred to as “Crazed Caps”. There have subsequently been a few additions to the system and the taxonomical revisions that seem to regularly hit the world of mycology mean that Hygrocybe has been split into several other genuses that also refer to waxcaps, including Cuphophyllus and Gliophorus. Nevertheless, the name CHEGD and the principles behind it still stand.   Snowy Waxcap (Cuphophyllus virgineus) Unimproved grassland habitats are few and far between in some parts of the world, with many of our large, open areas given over to agricultural practices that favour the rapid rotation of crops, for example, or they are earmarked for building houses upon. Ancient grasslands might not get as much attention in environmental conservation and restoration as woodlands or even wetlands, but it is thought that the hyphal mats of the CHEGD fungi are likely good carbons stores in their own right which could easily be destroyed if ploughed or otherwise disrupted – so planting trees in grassland habitats might not reap the dividends in terms of carbon offsetting that some might have us believe. Village greens and graveyards are among the kind of environmentally unsullied areas one might expect to find waxcaps, but it seems the British Isles is rather blessed in terms of unimproved ancient grasslands, from the South Downs in Sussex to Hadrian’s Wall and in particular Scotland and Wales, from heaths to sand dunes and coastal slopes, and from hay meadows to roadside verges and the lawns of stately homes, as I discovered in a fascinating online talk given by Sean Cooch and Clare Blencowe this summer which was recorded and can be seen viewed here.  Meadow Waxcap (Cuphophyllus pratensis) As I mentioned in my July piece on the Beefsteak Fungus, we have quite a few fungi species in the United Kingdom which are relatively common here while rare on the European mainland, and we need to make more people aware of this, so that their habits are preserved and ancient trees are not chopped down or vital fields ploughed (such as with this regrettable faux pas by the National Trust last year). Habitat loss is key to the scarcity of the Date Waxcap (Hygrocybe spadicea), one of Britain’s rarest fungi, which is one of five species of grassland fungi that appear in the Section 42 list “Species of Principal Importance to the Conservation of Biodiversity in Wales”, meaning public bodies have a duty towards their conservation. It is the only waxcap on the list, which also includes Violet Coral (Clavaria zollingeri), Big Blue Pinkgill (Entoloma bloxamii), Olive Earthtongue (Microglossum olivaceum) and Dark-purple Earthtongue (Geoglossum atropurpureum). There are about 50 species of waxcaps in the UK, and while I’m not going to go into detail about them individually, the names alone should point towards their beautiful range of colours: Scarlet Waxcap (Hygrocybe coccinea), Snowy Waxcap (Cuphophyllus virgineus), Honey Waxcap (Hygrocybe reidii), Splendid Waxcap (Hygrocybe splendidissima) and the Pink or Ballerina Waxcap (Hygrocybe calyptriformis). Blackening Waxcap (Hygrocybe conica) I’m opting for the Blackening Waxcap (Hygrocybe conica) as my fungi of focus for this post, in that it is the most easily to recognise: while its sticky and distinctively conical caps start off in a range of colours between red and orange, as they age or are damaged, they blacken in a quite unmistakeable manner, eventually going completely black and looking a bit like a witches hat. It is also the most common, although now it is thought that rather than a single species, it is actually a species complex or a group of very closely related separate species. Waxcaps are most commonly found from mid-September to the first frosts in November. If the colours and textures of these beautiful fungi aren’t enough to get you out and about hunting, then like the Standing Oak Tree Fungus Survey I mentioned in my Beefsteak Fungi post, the Waxcap Watch Survey currently being conducted by the international conservation organisation Plantlife might provide further incentive to get involved in an invaluable citizen science project. A Blackening Waxcap beginning to blacken. No real mycological knowledge is needed for this. The basic guide is to find a suitable area and check it out for these CHEGD, and only record the number of different colours of what you find. Whether you find much or don’t, enter the results using the App downloaded from the website, and they will be recorded on this interactive map. Some sites might not yield much, but they will at least be marked on the map as a red dot meaning “not much was recorded at this site but it’s worth having a look another time.” In contract, Green will show a vast diversity of species, with orange somewhere in between. I’ve not entered any data myself at the moment, as I’ve not found anything yet this year, but whereas the evidence shows a great waxcap diversity of sites in Wales, Scotland and the Southwest of England, there is little evidence of anything in my surrounding area in Kent. This is certainly not to say there’s nothing there. In previous years I have discovered a good variety of waxcap species in the village of Keston, just outside Bromley, a Parrot Waxcap in the grounds of Walmer Castle, and Blackening Waxcaps aplenty in the reclaimed coal spoil site of Betteshanger Park outside Deal. I am clearly overdue a revisit to these sites to record these finds. The astonishing colours and textures of the Goblet Waxcap (Hygrocybe cantharellus) For those who wish to dig deeper into the subject, there’s a free downloadable PDF on the Plantlife website providing a basic guide to the identification and management of waxcap and grassland fungi, listing about a dozen species. A fuller range can be looked in this dedicated section in the fabulous First Nature website, and if the sheer number look a bit daunting, then you’ll be happy to read that the Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre has provided this online Grassland Waxcap Identification Support Tool. Clare Blencowe details her love of waxcaps and the process behind developing this tool in the Newsletter of the National Forum for Biological Recording issue 58. And finally, the University of Aberystwyth provide a wealth of information on their Waxcap Website. Hopefully this will spur some of you on to head out into the grasslands on UK Fungus day and beyond to record your findings for the Waxcap Watch Survey. This kind of data provided by citizen scientists could prove really useful in making sure our unimproved or “unspoilt” natural areas remain so, and while there’s never been a case of a mushroom stopping a housing development, building up a public awareness of what we have in this country is essential. Blackening Waxcap  

And whoosh, just like that, the whole country changed… After the hottest, driest, summer on record, last Friday the rains finally broke over my parched little corner of the garden of England, transforming the woodlands into a veritable fungal jungle. Much of the joy in going out on regular photographic forays for mushrooms and toadstools for me comes from monitoring the changes in what can be found in specific sites across the seasons. You can head out several times a week and still find things that have popped up since your last visit, while previous finds can disappear without a trace as quickly as they appeared. There’s a definite fear of missing out on some exciting development or potential discovery when I don’t visit my local woods for a while. [caption id="attachment_38908" align="aligncenter" width="675"] Hairy Nuts Disco[/caption] My typical pattern is that I will head out and if I find something new that I’ve not seen yet that season, I will take a photograph of it, recording where and when I first noted its appearance for that year. I generally find around half a dozen or so different species on each trip, but rarely do I return having found nothing, no matter what the time of year, no matter how hot, cold, wet or dry it is. In this sense, I personally find fungi more interesting than plants, in that the number of species in a given wooded environment is far larger but it is very difficult to gauge much of what is there. Whereas the likes of ferns, brambles, bluebells, anemones etc, first emerge and grow relatively slowly, lingering for several months before dying back, most fungi just pop up and disappear within a matter of days. For much of the year they remain invisible as mycelium within their given substrate, with their fruiting bodies popping up in the form of mushrooms and toadstools so quickly that you have to be sure you’re around to catch the moment. Even something as massive and substantial as a Dryad’s Saddle (Cerioporus squamosus), a large bracket reaching up to a meter across with pores beneath and a characteristic hen pheasant pattern on its topside, can come and be gone within a matter of weeks. [caption id="attachment_38909" align="aligncenter" width="675"] The Dryad’s Saddle (Cerioporus squamosus) can come and be gone within a matter of weeks.[/caption] The early autumn period, which marks the beginning of the peak season for mushroom hunters, then, comes as something of a mixed blessing. While it’s hugely exciting seeing fungi that have been hidden underground or within dead wood manifesting their true colours for the first time, it’s almost overwhelming how much new stuff there is to take stock of. My woodland wander last Saturday, 10th September, reacquainted me with a plethora of perennial favourites I’d not seen for many, many months: Green Elfcups, Deer Shields, Oysterlings, Collared Parachutes, and numerous members of the Mycena genus. The most dramatic find, however, was a species that I’d not encountered before UK Fungus Day, on 2nd October of last year, during one of my first explorations of the woods nearby to the new home I’d just moved to, where I spied a tiny cluster of tiny brown cups nestling amongst the spines of a damp chestnut husk lying on the ground. [caption id="attachment_38910" align="aligncenter" width="675"] Hairy Nuts Disco[/caption] This specific host made identification a relatively straightforward matter. I’d found my first ever Lanzia echinophila, blessed with one of the most colourful monickers ever granted by those entrusted with coming up with the English common names listed by the British Mycological Society: the Hairy Nuts Disco. I must have come fairly late to the game last Autumn, however, if the amount I found after last week’s torrential downpours were anything to go by. Vast numbers of these tiny cups sprouted from every single one of the prickly decaying husks covering the ground (the “echinophila” part of its name means “spine-loving”).  [caption id="attachment_38911" align="aligncenter" width="675"] Hairy Nuts Disco[/caption] I’m not sure how common this species might be, as they are don’t seem to be listed in the otherwise exhaustive Fungi of Temperate Europe, but Peter Thompson’s Ascomycetes in Colour describes them as restricted to the rotting cupules of sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa), a tree which dominates the local woodlands of East Kent where it has been traditionally coppiced for use as gate poles and the like. Many of my local woodlands follow the model described in this previous Woodlands post on chestnut coppicing, with oak dotted amongst them, as well as a good number of hazel trees, also once coppiced extensively for use as hop-poles in the hop-growing heartlands of Kent. Many of the mixed deciduous woodlands in the area with chestnut, hazel and oak predominating are now in private hands, and no longer worked commercially, though some still are. [caption id="attachment_38914" align="aligncenter" width="675"] Hairy Nuts Disco[/caption] I would be curious to learn just how common a find Hairy Nuts Discos are across the United Kingdom. I found just one record on the The Fungal Records Database of Britain and Ireland (FRDBI), from September 2017 in Surrey, near Leatherhead, but there are a few more on iRecord, mostly from Sussex and Kent. These kind of things are probably not likely to be registered unless one is actively looking at chestnut husks, something which mushroom foragers in search of edibles are not likely to be doing.  In any case, the cups are relatively small, around 2-3mm in diameter, although can grow considerably larger to around a 1cm across, and the combination of the reddish brown colouration of the fertile hymenium inside the cup and the slightly lighter margins and stalk does make them rather blend in amongst the spikes. There are other small discomycetes fungi (i.e. disc-shaped ascomycetes) that can be found growing on fallen chestnut husks – I mentioned in passing the yellowish Hymenoscyphus serotinus in a post from June on the various lookalikes for fungus responsible for Ash Dieback, Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, as an example of the kind of thing the eagle eyed might spot rummaging around the forest litter.  [caption id="attachment_38913" align="aligncenter" width="675"] Hairy Nuts Disco[/caption] I’m still not entirely sure whether the name, memorable as it may be, describes this species particularly well, as these tiny fruit bodies aren’t particularly hairy, although there is a slightly fibrous texture to the outsides. That said, Hairy Nuts Discos are unlikely to be mistaken for anything else once you know what it is, so if you notice them while scavenging for chestnuts this autumn, please do post a comment here so we might get a better idea of how prevalent they are across the country. [caption id="attachment_38912" align="aligncenter" width="675"] Hairy Nuts Disco[/caption]

There’s usually a distinct seasonal change around this time of year. Typically, we get a scorching hot July while the kids are at school with their heads down for exams, only for the temperatures to drop and the clouds to set in as soon as they break up for the summer hols. I could almost time the end of the school year by the appearance of this month’s mushroom of focus, as the first heavy summer rains prompt mass flourishings of Pale Brittlestems (Candolleomyces candolleanus), sometimes known as the Crumble Cap, or Common Crumble Cap. Alongside Sulphur Tufts, Fairy Inkcaps, Collared Parachutes, and the (related by common name at least) Trooping Crumble Cap, the sight of this species for me really seems to mark the arrival of the bona-fide mushroom season, just at the point where boredom with rusts, crusts and ascomycetes is beginning to set in.  Except this year is slightly different. We’ve recorded our hottest temperatures of all time in the UK, with the thermometer breaching the 40C mark here in the part of Kent where I’m based, and the past few weeks have been spent awaiting the long overdue summer deluge to bring a climax to the heatwave. But the rains haven’t come. The ground is parched and bare. I literally can’t remember the last time it rained. Pale Brittlestem One would suspect this to be a pretty bad situation for fungi. However the shortening hours of daylight in August and the consequently cooler nights have a positive knock on effect in that dew begins to fall more easily, and in the shady stillness of the woods, first thing in the morning at least, things are relatively cool and damp at ground level. And so while I’ve set out on my recent woodland wanderings with lowered expectations, I was delighted to find just a few days ago that the current drought situation hasn’t put pay to the appearance of this herald of fungal things to come. Yes, the Pale Brittlestems have arrived, and if perchance it does rain before this post goes online, I’d wager there’ll be a whole lot more of them appearing. This commonplace species is so generically mushroom-looking that while it provides quite a challenge to identify for beginners, once you’ve become more familiar with it, you should pretty much recognise it with some ease. In this sense, it is rather like the similarly nondescript Clouded Funnel (Clitocybe nebularis), in that it varies quite dramatically in form and colour throughout its various stages of growth. Pale Brittlestem In terms of habitat, it too is saprobic, growing either singly or in scattered groups on organic debris such as leaf litter, around rotting tree stumps or small bits of buried wood in parks, gardens and, of course, woodlands. When I describe it as common, it is one of those species that I see pretty much every year and have found in a range of different locations. Interestingly, I’ve often found it by entrances to woods or at the side of paths running through them. I recently identified this fungi growing around a hydrangea in someone’s garden. They asked how to get rid of it, but I queried why anyone would want to do that, pointing out that they’re totally harmless by any definition of the word – you could even eat them, if that’s your bag, although probably only the most desperate would bother. By feeding off dead organic material (presumably small twigs in this instance), breaking it down and returning the carbon and other nutrients to the soil, it can only be a good thing for the garden. Lets look at the hallmarks of this particular little mushroom. First of all, it should come as little surprise to learn that the Pale Brittlestem has a brittle stem (or rather stipe, in mycological parlance). Bend it, and it will snap. Run your fingernail along its edge to cut it lengthwise and you’ll notice it is hollow, like a dandelion stalk. It also bares a distinctive pattern that I always find useful for identification, looking a little like a pure white scurfy snakeskin. This pattern is formed by the remnants of the veil, or velum – the membrane from inside which the immature fruit body develops in and emerges from. Occasionally, this stem has a ring around it, although I’ve never seen this myself. Pale Brittlestem The flesh in the cap is also thin and delicate and breaks easily. The gills underneath are relatively tightly packed and start out white, but like a supermarket mushroom, darken as the spores mature within them through pinks and greys to a dark brown. Lay the cap on a white piece of paper for a few hours and you’ll get a dark brown spore print. The Pale Brittlestem is a member of the Psathyrellaceae “family of dark-spored agarics that generally have rather soft, fragile fruiting bodies”, which also include the coprinoids, or inkcaps, such as the Shaggy Inkcap. However, another key identification feature here is that the gills don’t auto-digest and melt away into a black ooze like those of these species. Pale Brittlestem The cap starts out dome-shaped and golden-brown in colour and flattens out to a diameter within the range of 3-6cm when fully expanded, while also fading to a pale near white colour like your typical shop-bought button mushroom but with slight yellow tinges. That’s right – the golden-brown dome-shaped mushroom that may be sitting amongst or not far from the group of thin-flesh mushroom-coloured and mushroom-shaped mushrooms is most likely the same mushroom. Geoffrey Kibby, in his Mushrooms and Toadstools of Britain and Europe vol 3 writes that when young, they can also be “reddish ochre”, and to further confuse matters, the caps are also hygrophanous – which means they range dramatically in colour and darkness depending on how wet or dry they are, and sometimes two tones can be present in the same cap. This cap does however present some clues amongst the confusion, mainly in the form of the tatty fringes around the margin, which like the patterns on the stipe are the remnants of the velum and also appear as flecks across the cap’s upper surface. I had a vague idea in my mind that these fringes were what gave this mushroom it’s latin name, Candolleomyces candolleanus – that it had something to do with candlewick bedspreads or lampshades or suchlike. It turns out, however, that there is not even the remotest of links, and that this species was named in honour of the Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle (1778-1841). Pale Brittlestem While we are on the subject of Latin names, it is worth pointing out that until very recently Candolleomyces candolleanus was known as Psathyrella candolleanus – so recently in fact that the encyclopedic Fungi of Temperate Europe (2019) still refers to it by this earlier name, as does its entry on the First Nature website and even that of the British Mycological Society as of this time of writing.  Psathyrella was a sizeable genus that was used to encompass a vast range of the small saprobic mushrooms linked by brittle stipes, dark spores and non-dissolving gills. Many of the Psathyrellas tended to be very difficult to pinpoint down to species level due to the variability of cap shape and colouration depending on their age and environmental humidity on the one hand, and the overlap of these visible features between various different species on the other. They are the type of fungi that amateur foragers might apply the term LBM (“Little Brown Mushroom”) to. Even microscopic inspection of spores and other hidden features revealed the difference between many of the Psathyrellas was often pretty hazy.  As the American mycologist Michael Kuo wrote on MushroomExpert.com in 2011, “the traditional genus “Psathyrella” is headed for some pretty big changes.” DNA analysis has revealed recently that many of those thought closely related are in fact anything but, and the Psathyrella genus has undergone a massive taxonomic overhaul.  Conical Brittlestem (Parasola conopilus) An illustrative example would be the Conical Brittlestem, which also has a hygrophanous cap that can be dark brown and two-toned when fresh or damp, and is noticeably paler when old and dry. The Conical Brittlestem has moved from being Psathyrella conopilus to Parasola conopilus, emphasising how it is by no means as closely related to the Pale Brittlestem as might be assumed from its physical appearance. Just to further confuse matters, Geoffrey Kibby’s entry for Candolleomyces candolleanus describes it as “A species complex yet to be sorted out” – in other words, this species-level identification of the Pale Brittlestem seems to encompasses a range of genetically different organisms that are so similar in terms of observable features that the boundaries between them are very blurred. It is true, just as there are many mushroom species that look so similar to Candolleomyces candolleanus that you’d be forgiven for identifying them as such (the Clustered Brittlestem or Psathyrella multipedata being one such example), the variability of the Pale Brittlestem’s appearance is also marked enough for the potential to confuse it with other species.  Pale Brittlestem Let us leave it to the molecular scientists and the hardcore mycological experts to quibble about the minutiae of Brittlegill taxonomy. I think the Pale Brittlegill provides a wonderful example of an instance where it would be quite forgivable for the average nature lover to ditch the Latin and not to bash ones brains out over more thorough identifications.  If one follows the basic guidelines in this post, I do however think it should be easy to put the name Pale Brittlegill to this common species that you should be seeing a lot more of around now, or at least get somewhere close to an identification. Pale Brittlestem 

Beefsteak Fungus. The very name seems to suggest a choice edible, something meaty, tasty and substantial. The Latin name, Fistulina hepatica, sounds more like a medical condition. The hepatica part means ‘liver’, for this is what the fruiting bodies look like: dark reddish-brown, wedge- or tongue-shaped and weeping large droplets of a crimson exudate that looks much like blood. Slice the relatively soft flesh of this large bracket and it has the marbled appearance of a steak. I think all but the most ardent forager would probably concur that the Beefsteak Fungus doesn’t taste remotely as good as it looks. Firm and juicy turns to wet and floppy in the pan, but if that isn’t enough of a deterrent, then the overpowering sour acetic taste will be. Like many woodland fungi, this species is best left where found to fulfil its primary function of distributing spores and providing food for more appreciative woodland denizens. The Beefsteak Fungus should be appearing in woodlands from any time now until mid-Autumn and is pretty easy to spot. Compared with other brackets, it is soft and pliable. It reaches about 30cm in diameter and 5cm in thickness and a thick stem can often be seen attaching it to its host. Its upper side ranges from flesh-pink when young to deep chestnut red-brown when mature. However, it is the yellowish underside, which also bleeds when cut, that provides the real clincher for identification. Rather than a surface pitted with pores, the Beefsteak Fungus has a thin layer of densely grouped tubes that hang down separately from one another rather than be embedded in the pore layer itself – this is where Fistulina (“little tubes”) part of the name comes from. These characteristics make it a unique fungus in Europe, where it is the only species in the Fistulinaceae family. You certainly won’t need a microscope to look at spores or suchlike to identify it, you’ll be relieved to hear. While it can be found on related trees like chestnut, the Beefsteak grows primarily on oak, usually fairly low down the trunk, and occasionally on stumps. More specifically, this brown-rotter favours older oaks, and with the UK boasting some 120 million oaks, with our 49,000 veteran or ancient oaks totalling more than all other European countries combined, we should feel particularly blessed. While the Beefsteak Fungus is a fairly common site in Britain, in several other countries it is considered rare. It is on the red list of legally protected species in Poland, to name one but one such example. There’s a potential problem even here in the UK, however. According to the Woodland Trust, Oaks can be considered “veteran” or “notable” when they reach the age of 150 years. After reaching 400 years, they are classed as ancient, and some can go on to live up to 1000 years. It is not just tree-huggers who should be up in arms by such incidents as the recent felling by Peterborough Council of a 600-year-old oak to avoid a potential insurance claim involving two houses on an estate built around the tree just 30 years before.  Ancient oaks support an astonishing biodiversity; not just lichens, mosses and a rich array of insects and other invertebrates, but birds, mammals and of course, fungi. According to the Standing Oak Tree Fungus Survey, of which more later, oaks support over 2,300 species (this is not including all the fungi and other microbes), of which 320 are endemic to oak and a further 229 only rarely found on any other trees. More can be read on oak biodiversity on the sites of the Woodland Trust, The Ancient Oaks of England and ActionOak. Ancient oaks support species that younger oaks can’t, and so Peterborough council’s announcement it would plant 100 new trees to mitigate the environmental impact caused by its destruction should be seen as the greenwash that it is. One of our big problems in the United Kingdom is that over the past century or so, we have been rather remiss in our protection of oaks, and come the inevitable loss of our oldest species, we are missing the new generations to replace them and therefore hosts for the numerous animal, plant and fungi species that depend upon them. In relation to fungi, the Beefsteak Fungus is safe for the moment, but there’s one other species in the UK that is considerably more at risk. The Oak Polypore (Buglossoporus quercinus), a large bracket found on ancient oaks in openly grown settings, is one of only four species on the Red List of legally protected species in UK.  It is believed to be present in “350 localities in Europe (incl. suspected unrecorded localities).” It is more prevalent here than the rest of Europe however, due to such relatively safe enclaves as the Windsor Crown Estate. But host and habitat lost are the main threats to the very rare fungus which, for such sad but inevitable reasons, I have been unable to find and photograph. This brings me back to the Standing Oak Tree Fungus Survey, spearheaded by Richard Wright as part of a PhD research project under the Action Oak initiative aimed at mapping the fungal diversity of Britain’s oaks of and assessing “their interactions, and their effects on the life of tree”, depending on such factors as their age and location. The project started in 2020 and is intended to run until 2023. There’s obviously a huge amount of data that needs collecting and crunching through for this, and this is where you, the Citizen Scientist, can play a role. The project openly encourages the involvement of “anyone who can tell a chicken-of-the-woods from a beefsteak” (easy – one is yellow; the other is red!), by reporting their finds on an app that can be downloaded from the project’s website here. There’s also the dedicated Standing Oak Tree Fungus Survey Facebook group that can be joined for more details and discussion. [caption id="attachment_38542" align="aligncenter" width="675"] Caption: Chicken or beef? The sulphur yellow layered brackets of the Chicken-of-the-Woods.[/caption] I emphasised the importance of more people taking an active interest in fungi in my post earlier this year.  : ‘Mycophilia and Recording the Fungal Diversity of the United Kingdom’.  Mycology can be a daunting and difficult subject, but this project provides a great starting point for those who wish to dig deeper. Englands oaks need you!

June is the month when I’ve tended to find the first primary evidence of Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, the ascomycetes fungus responsible for the dreaded Ash Dieback. By this I mean that the while the presence of the disease is manifest all year round in terms of the sight of dead or dying ash trees, this is the time when one can first see the tiny ascocarp fruiting bodies responsible for spreading the spores. Hunt around in the debris at the base of an afflicted tree, and one can find these miniscule cream-coloured goblet-shaped ascocarps on the blackened fallen petioles and rachises of the previous year’s growth; the stems and stalks that make up the recognisable ‘pinnate’ leaf form of this species, with the blackening itself symptomatic of the presence of this destructive pathogen. The timing is interesting in that, with ash one of the last trees in our wooded environments to come into leaf, these ascocarps first begin to appear at a time when all good healthy trees should be in full leaf, shooting their spores (more specifically ‘ascospores’) into the air where they infect their host, unimpeded by the early plants of the woodland understory such as anemones, arums and bluebells that have by now died back for another year. The infection becomes evident on the tree itself with the blackening and wilting of leaves and shoots from July to September (Chalara fraxinea was the name for this separate asexual stage, and hence, before the link to the H. fraxineus was discovered, the name Chalara Ash Dieback took hold). [caption id="attachment_38272" align="aligncenter" width="675"] The unwelcome site of Hymenoscyphus fraxineus ascocarps growing from blackened twigs beneath ash trees.[/caption] I covered Ash Dieback in some detail a few ago, but for this months Fungi Focus, I want to discuss a few small lookalike species – the term discomycetes is used to describe the cup-shaped ascomycetes – that shouldn’t be such cause for alarm. The ascomycetes can be a horrible group when it comes to identification, with at least double the amount of species worldwide than the other major phylum of fungi, the basidiomycetes, and a scant few of them baring common names. Going by visible features alone, it is difficult enough to pinpoint down to genus level, yet alone species, with close microscopic scrutiny necessary to go any further. A case in point is Hymenoscyphus albidus, whose ascocarps look identical to H. fraxineus to the naked eye: Both grow exclusively on ash and both have the same blackening effect on the fallen petioles on which they grow. It is for this reason that H. fraxineus has also gone under the synonym H. pseudoalbinus. The only difference between this native fungus and the invasive interloper believed to have arrived from Asia, aside from the fact that it doesn’t kill its host, is that H. albidus does not possess hook-like “Croziers” at the base of its asci (where the spores are produced) – something that can only be ascertained microscopically.  [caption id="attachment_38273" align="aligncenter" width="675"] The related and near identical looking Hymenoscyphus scutula, fruiting on a dead bramble stem.[/caption] I don’t wish to blind the reader with science here, but one take home point is that if you do find tiny nail-shaped ascocarps on blackened fraxineus (ash) debris, it doesn’t necessarily spell doom for your local ash population – it might well be this harmless indigenous species. Another thing to consider is that the Ash Dieback fungus might not only be laying waste to our native ash population, but also outcompeting H. albidus in the process, thus another species falls under threat, albeit a miniscule fungi that is not quite so cherished as our ash trees and indeed is barely noticed by most of us. How many people are scouring the UK to estimate the ratio of H. albidus to H. fraxineus at the moment? Probably less than a handful, if any, I’d say. There are 155 species in the Hymenoscyphus genus according to Wikipedia, but there are probably many many more. Even the dozen or so listed in Peter Thompson’s Ascomycetes in Colour (2013) and Læssøe and Petersen’s Fungi of Temperate Europe (2019) look so similar as to make the eyes water. Some can be identified by their host – they might grow on leaves of specific plants, dead stems of herbaceous plants, or nuts and acorns – although never with total certainty. For example, I found similar tiny cream ascocarps growing on a dead blackberry stem. They seemed to fit the description of Hymenoscyphus scutula. The spores matched too, but even then, I couldn’t be 100% sure.  [caption id="attachment_38274" align="aligncenter" width="675"] These yellow discomycetes growing on a chestnut husk are probable Hymenoscyphus serotinus, although one can never be certain without checking under the microscope[/caption] Some are slightly more notable in the colour department. The small yellow cups I found growing on a chestnut husk could have been H. seritonus, or maybe H. monticola, or maybe something different entirely. I wasn’t going to bash my brains out trying to get any further in such cases, and nor should you. This is very very advanced specialist stuff. (For the record, as well as looking at spore shapes and sizes, the serious “ascomycetologist” would look at features such as the lengths of the asci and the ‘paraphyses’, the sterile hair-like filaments also contained as support structures within the fruit bodies). Anyway, lets move on to simpler things, namely two species of discomycetes that look superficially rather similar to the Ash Dieback fungi but are much easier to distinguish. These are Spring Pins (Cudoniella clavus) and Oak Pins (Cudoniella acicularis). One difference that can be noted with these and the Hymenoscyphus species is that the hymenium, the upward facing fertile surface in which the asci are embedded and release their spores from, is convex than concave – more dome-shaped than cup-shaped, although sometimes flatter. The appearance of both of these are of little nails or pins, as spelled out in the ‘clavus’ (for ‘nail’) part of the Latin name for Spring Pins. [caption id="attachment_38275" align="aligncenter" width="675"] Spring Pins (Cudoniella clavus), can be found growing twigs and other deciduous litter in freshwater environments..[/caption] Spring Pins, as the name suggests, appear from April to July, and usually in great abundance. They are not limited to ash trees anyway, but are found on any deciduous litter and dead wood in wet habitats; the ones depicted here were growing on fallen twigs in a ditch, a typical environment as they often appear in clean still or flowing freshwater habitats.  They are creamy white to yellowish and average around 4mm in diameter, getting up to 8mm according to Thompson, so do appear significantly larger than H. fraxineus. They are longer stemmed too, on average, and have a slightly gelatinous although not quite translucent appearance. This combination of size, shape and habitat should make this relatively widespread fungus not too challenging to identify. [caption id="attachment_38276" align="aligncenter" width="675"] Long-stemmed, gelatinous, with dome-shaped caps and slightly larger in size, Spring Pins are easy to distinguish from Hymenoscyphus species.[/caption] Oak Pins are also common. These are much smaller, with the markedly dome-shaped caps just 1-4mm in diameter, the margins slightly in-rolled so that from above they look like tiny gilled mushrooms such as the smallest mycena species – although a look underneath with a hand lens will clear up any doubt. These are much whiter than the other species discussed thus far, although develop black and brownish spots as they age.  One notable aspect to Oak Pins is that if one looks really closely, one can see that they are slightly hairy, particularly on the stems. But their substrate, not to mention their sheer proliferation across it, should be the real clincher for ID purposes. They almost exclusively appear on very old well-rotted oak stumps, and later in the year too – from August throughout the winter into March, although with the British climate as unpredictable as it is, quite possibly outside of these months. [caption id="attachment_38277" align="aligncenter" width="675"] Oak Pins (Cudoniella acicularis), another common find; smaller, whiter, with slightly hairy stems and discolouring with age.[/caption] June is hardly considered the best time to be out looking for fungi. These examples should show that there is still plenty about during the early Summer months, but many species are very small, very obscure and often very difficult to identify. This post, I hope should go some way to rectifying this final problem for some of them.  And if you do find what you suspect to be Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, don’t forget to report it. Happy hunting! [caption id="attachment_38278" align="aligncenter" width="675"] A proliferation of Oak Pins across a rotting stump.[/caption]

May Fungi Focus - Campion Anther Smut  Spring is busting out all over, a time of fresh growth and new life. The past few months have seen a succession of our native woodland flora coming into their own; first woodland anemones then bluebells and primroses and now Ramsons  (wild garlic) and arums like the majestic Lords-and-Ladies or Cuckoo Pint. Amongst all this vibrant colour, it almost seems perverse to let ones thoughts wander to fungi, in most minds associated with death and decay.  Nevertheless, there are whole swathes of species that make their homes on the living tissue of plants. The rusts, for example, are particularly conspicuous at this time of year when such early bloomers begin to die back. Many are specific to one plant, or jump between different species at different stages in their own and their host’s lifecycle. Identify the plant, and most of the time you can identify the rust. Wherever you find Alexanders, for example, you are likely to find Alexanders Rust (Puccinia smyrnii). Wood anemones play host to Tranzschelia anemones, while the orange circular blotches you can see on the leaves of Lords-and-Ladies (Arum maculatum) and Ramsons (Allium ursinum) are most likely caused by Arum Rust (Puccinia sessilis). In a previous two-part post, I’ve covered Bluebell Rust (Uromyces muscari), that usually appear just before the leaves begin to die back (part one can be read here and part two here), while I’ve also written about Blackberry Leaf Rust (Phragmidium violaceum), and Dock Leaf Rust (Puccinia phragmitis), this latter an example of a species that overwinters in a different form on a different host, in this case Common Reeds. Rusts are described as parasitic and pathogenic. For certain cash crops, host-specific rusts can cause havoc in commercial monocultures. The examples I’ve outlined above, however, might be considered opportunists whose lifecycles have evolved to fit in with their specific ecosystems. Needless to say, there are many, many species of rusts, and precious few people paying attention to them. [caption id="attachment_38169" align="aligncenter" width="675"] Beauty is in the eye of the beholder: Arum Rust on the underside of an Arum leaf.[/caption] This is even more the case of smuts. While some might argue that, for example, the circular arrangements of blisters of Arum Rust have a certain organic beauty, in the Haeckelian sense, few would make such a case for smuts. Rusts target the leaves or other greens part of plants, often manifesting themselves as their hosts die back. Smuts head straight for the reproduction organs – fruits, seeds and stamens. They are not called smuts for nothing. The name derives from the German for dirt, and indeed, they manifest themselves in thick coatings of dark brown to black spores (teliospores, to be specific, but there’s no need to go into the particular details here), transforming the parts of the plant they grow on into a dark sooty mass. Much of the attention focussed on them is on species that have commercial ramifications (again, like the rusts). Ustilago tritici, for example, affects the seeds of the cereals wheat and rye, and can result in serious crop losses. Unsurprising then that it should be one of the very few species detailed in the pages of Læssøe and Petersen’s Fungi of Temperate Europe. It would be a tough argument to make that smuts present much in the way of benefit to mankind, although it is worth mentioning that in Mexico, there is one species whose presence is more welcome: the Corn Smut (Ustilago maydis) transforms the kernels of maize into a delicacy known as huitlacoche. However, there are around at least hundred different smut species in the British Isles, and most are as common as the host they grow upon. This month’s Fungi Focus is on the Campion Anther Smut (Microbotryum violaceum), one of the most commonly reported and easiest to find, as Red Campion itself is in itself a very widespread native plant that pops up alongside roadsides, pathways and hedgerows to brighten up the summer months with its pink-red flowers. As should be clear from its name, this smut targets the anthers*, so can be spotted from a distance as the centre of the flowers will be a sooty brown to purplish-black colour (hence the ‘violaceum’ part of its name’) instead of the usual light pink, the stamen and anthers coated with this spore mass. [caption id="attachment_38171" align="aligncenter" width="675"] As nature intended? An un-smutty Red Campion.[/caption] While this smut adds little cosmetic appeal to the flowers, the teliospores do present a certain fascination when viewed under the microscope; spherical and ranging from 6-10microns in diameter, and covered in an intriguing pentagonal reticular pattern. The smut transfers itself to other plants by pollinating insects who would otherwise be involved in aiding the reproductive process of the campion itself. Smuts might be viewed as a sort of horticultural STD.  Nevertheless, the ubiquity of campion flowers at this time of year would suggest that this smut does not have a particularly negligible effect on the fecundity of this particular species. Indeed, from my own observations over the years, it is rarely that present even in areas rife with campion and when it does appear, it is localised to handful of plants. [caption id="attachment_38172" align="aligncenter" width="675"] The teleospores of Microbotryum violaceum, or more specifically,  M. lychnidis-dioicae.[/caption] Microbotryum violaceum is one of the more regularly recorded of the smuts that grown on the native plants of the British Isles, and as such one should consider it a native species in its own right.   In fact, more recent investigation has shown just how specialist it is. While I’m still using the old catch-all term for the sake of simplicity, it has been split up to create several more host specific ones: M. lychnidis-dioicae is the new name to describe the smut occurring on the anthers of Red and White Campion; M. coronariae appears on Ragged-Robin; M. saponariae on Soapwort; M. silenes-inflatae on Sea Campion and M. stellariae on Lesser Stitchwort. But one does have to ask oneself just how many people out there would consider a smut even worth recording. As specialist plant pathogens, individual species of smuts can be considered as rare or as common as their host plants, and with many native plants themselves under threat from habitat loss, their associated smuts suffer accordingly. Interestingly, according to a recent publication compiled by Ray Woods, Arthur Chater, Paul Smith, Nigel Stringer, and Debbie Evans entitled Smut and Allied Fungi of Wales A Guide, Red Data List and Census Catalogue (2018), “No smut species are specially protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 but a single smut species (Urocystis colchici) found on Autumn Crocus (Colchicum autumnale) is listed on Section 7 of the Environment (Wales) Act 2013 as being ‘a living organism of principal importance for the purpose of maintaining and enhancing biodiversity in relation to Wales’.” The same publication lists the example of Urocystis ulmariae, found only once in Wales on a single Meadowsweet plant, and placed it in the “Critically Endangered D2” category. The fascinating The Lost and Found Fungi Project, conducted by mycologists at Kew Gardens to investigate whether historically reported fungi species that have not been recorded in recent years are actually extinct or just not recorded, has also focussed on Rusts and Smuts. It is worth a look just as an example that there is some interest in smut distribution and conservation.  One might question the worth of recording, studying or conserving fungi species that so evidently hamper the reproductive abilities of their hosts. As ever, I’d argue in these posts that until the funding and human effort is put into such endeavours, we will never know. * anthers - pollen producing part of the stamens. Wild garlic