There is not a lot of love for resupinate or crust fungi even amongst fungi specialists, yet alone the wider community of naturalists and nature recorders. I’ve outlined some of the reasons why this might be so in my previous postings on Hairy Curtain Crusts, Elder Whitewash, and Cinnamon Porecrusts – these are mainly related to their inedibility and difficulty in identifying them. However, in last month’s focus on Antrodia carbonica, I did hint at why one might, perhaps even should, develop an interest in the subject, or at least an awareness – especially if you are an arborist, builder or anyone else who deals with wood or timber for a living. I remember an occasion shortly after I first started dipping my toes into the subject, when I found a striking example of a corticioid fungus (i.e. possessing a smooth surface, without pores) on one of the trees in an avenue of cypresses stretching alongside a public right of way through farmland. The bulk of the crust that spread thinly across the bark of its host was white, with a distinctive cobwebby margin. Read more...

There is an aspect to going out on a fungi foray, and indeed looking at all parts of the natural world (I’m sure insect hunters will tell you the same), that makes one think of ‘Pokémon Go’.  You head out into the woods, not knowing what you’ll find, but with the awareness that some of your discoveries definitively trump others in terms of their impressiveness and rarity. Of course, not everything that is rare is particularly impressive to look at, but that doesn’t dampen the excitement when you realise you have found something that has been very seldom recorded and which you might have been the only person ever to notice in your area.  Many crust fungi can be considered rare precisely because they are so rarely recorded. Part of the reason they are so rarely recorded is because they are so rarely identified, and part of the reason they are so rarely identified is because, on the surface, many appear as relatively nondescript compared with more flamboyant members of their kingdom. You have to look long and carefully, often through a microscope, to work out what they are.  Read more...