Sardo surprise.

First Fungus found was spectacular - Clathrus ruber - the Red Cage. Starts like an egg, then opens up to let the flies in to eat all the goo and then they excrete the bits complete with the spores of the fungus. Either there are a lot of flies here or conditions are very good because the island has loads of these things. (Friend tells me it's the same in Greek islands - MUST be the flies...)

Sardinia or Bust.

This year the BMS International Foray was in Sardinia, largest island in the med and whether approached by sea or air a fun way from home. We drove there via the Mont Blanc tunnel into Courmayeur which was more or less shut. Then via Pisa to Livorno where despite the lack of signs and lighting we found a large boat (Moby Freedom) swallowing big trucks like a whale swallowing plankton. Drove on board - only time I ever got into 3rd gear on a boat - and woke up next day at Olbia. Never saw the sea at all.
Hotel found and we're almost the first, since the rest are coming by air. View from hotel superb skyline of small granite peaks. (Click for pic.)

Harlow Carr Mushroom Day

For the last four years we have hosted what is now becoming the annual Harlow Carr Garden Mushroom Day. Harlow Carr are quite pleased about this as, such has become the popularity of this event, the corresponding Garden attendance has doubled. We find it fun and hard work and I'm not sure why we do it because the effect on the Group membership, if any, is not particularly marked. It does however allow us to address a section of the public that never seems to consider fungusses - despite penicillin and Marmite - as other than poisonous intrusions which get in the way of nice clean lawns.
Whatever. Some 62 species were found on the three forays we ran for those lucky enough to get on them. And we did get a full page in the Yorkshire Post.

Nice thing in the woods

Scrambling around the woods, trailing a bunch of the people and generally enjoying an ego-trip. So many folk don't know the little that I have somewhere in my head, always an astonishing and encouraging experience. Furthermore, Joe (or in this case Josephine) Public often comes out of the undergrowth bearing unusual and beautiful things - yesterday it was an absolutely gorgeous Amanita - A. muscaria v. aureola (click for picture). Only the 6th Brit. record, this is more delicate than the usual rather butch and reddish find but presumably is too close to be a separate species, although there are differences apart from colour - for instance the basal volva is much closer to the Amanitopsis group and the ring much more fragile. But what a nice surprise!

Neglected Nature Reserve

27 th September 2006
Walked around Bretton Lakes NR looking for things that Enid will show the Wakefield Womens Walking Complex tomorrow. Rather a decline in new fungusses and although we found 47 species, many were seriously damaged by invertebrates and clumsy visitors, altogether rather a disappointing show for this, the most prolific site in our area. The Laetipous sulphureus (Chicken of the Woods) photographed earlier [click for picture if not shown] was still undamaged although a trifle bedraggled due to the recent rain and sun.
The worst feature, however was the apparent total neglect of the woodland by the 'caring' organisation Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. Rhododendron are spreading but - seriously worse - very large areas of the western end are completely overgrown by Himalayan Balsam and Brambles - some of the former as much as eight feet tall - and the Himalayan Balsam seems to be getting the better of the brambles as well. Many of the large beeches which are a feature here have been felled, presumably to safeguard the public but the saplings which might begin to replace them are being totally swamped. No native species of plant or fungus has a chance against this monstrous alien weed which stifles all around it. (The only thing worse is Japanese Knotweed which is almost totally ineradicable). This will soon be no longer a British wood but an ecological monoculture, effectively a desert.
The eastern end of the Reserve is not quite as bad, although like the other side the brambles are not being kept down; up to a few years ago, cattle were allowed to roam in the woodland and this was an effective check on the grass and possibly the brambles as well. Up to 2002 we always found a good number of Hygrocybe species decorating the grassy areas but the grass here is now so long and rank that we have hard work to find any - in what was the area's finest spot for this genus.

Vandalism again

Of course some uncivilised bird-brain has to find the nice group of Amanitas I pictured earlier and kick them about the woods. Well, I saw them first. [Click the button if picture not displayed].

Still not dead

This site is still under construction ....... and hasn't really found it's direction ......
but five of us went out last Saturday on an official foray and found quite a bunch of stuff. Most of the usual suspects turned up - Collybia, Amanita, Boletus and a nice group of Pholiota squarrosa. However Enid and I had to leave early and after we had gone, the remaining three came across the Old Man of the Woods - Strobilomyces floccopus - and one of the shaggiest I've ever seen. See picture (copyright PS). This is the fourth site known in our area for this species, which turns up irregularly in Leeds and near Halifax but so far has not been recorded around Wakefield.

What On Earth Is Going On?

The controversy about the Dangerous Drug status of certain fungi rumbles on. The BMS are trying to get some dispensation from the Home Office which will allow bona-fide mycologists to possess specimens which contain psilocybin. If this succeeds it will, in my opinion, inevitably lead to a licensing scheme which will cost us money and allow the Home Office to profit from their stupidity.
Personally I believe that the BMS would have been better advised to declare a total lack of co-operation with anything other than the removal of the said fungi from the DD list altogether. This might drag the issue further into the public arena and produce some common sense discussion rather than the current blank declaration that these items are too dangerous for ordinary people to be in contact with.
I really don’t understand what is in the mind of these Civil Servants. The idea that because a substance might be used to harm or excite oneself, everybody must be prohibited from touching it, is absolutely too ridiculous for belief. The same argument could be used to ban the sale of most disinfectants, bleach, matches, petrol, fertilisers, alcohol, tobacco, paint sprays or nail varnish, or glue etc etc etc.
---And what is the basis of the argument? That some misguided person who MIGHT have been under the influence of ‘magic mushrooms’ has been known to jump out of a high window (the ultimate bad trip, I suppose). Even if the story were true, nowhere is it alleged that he was FORCED to ingest said substance, he took it of his own free will.
What happened in the USA in the 1930’s ? - Booze was forbidden and crime multiplied. More people die every week on the roads than are killed in a year by drugs but anybody can drive a car any time they like - and all the time and money spent on the ‘Drug Problem’ has not diminished the number of addicts and idiots by any amount worth counting.
And now we ourselves - members of the population with a totally innocent and harmless hobby -have been turned into criminals by some jack-in-office who probably never even considered that we exist. Well - see you in Armley.

Weather Fine

3rd. September
Hartley Bank and the Calder Canal. Walking around the home patch again and getting a stiff back photographing some delightful Amanita muscaria, the first in this area this year (see previous post). Another 30 records included Russula xerampelina and the more obscure very green Russula cyanoxantha var. cuteofracta. The former confirmed by the dark green stain in iron salts and the second, although battered, unable to be assigned to anything else. There was another interesting Lactarius, this time L. serifluus I was at first trying to turn it into L subumbonatus again, but the rounded cheilocystidia and complete lack of macro-pleurocystidia eventually convinced me otherwise. This is as far as I know the only Lactarius of this colour which has these features.- it looks like a rather dark L tabidus with watery milk. The find of the day, however, was a splendid Leccinum duriusculum - the first for the Group unless someone has been hiding them. Very satisfying.
Later on, our amazing neighbour (ex-WW2 merchant navy, sunk several times, still cleaning his own gutters at 86) turns up Leucoagaricus leucothites under his Jasmine bushes, which was nice. Oddly enough, last year I found the same species in the Memorial Park over the road and it seems that it rather likes gardens - in fact I’ve never seen it anywhere else. Did turn up in a plant pot some time ago as well, now I come to think. It’s supposed to be edible but is too close to Lepiota for my liking.
7th. September
Collecting for Indoor meeting.. First Amanita muscaria for the rubble-heap of The Strands, abandoned industrial site between railway and river Calder. Numerous self-set birch with occasional oak and too much Himalayan Balsam.. Most years Fly Agaric is prolific but not as yet this one. Over canal to Hartley Bank again, where could hardly walk without stepping on Amanita rubescens, perhaps as many as a thousand of them. Yes I do mean that many. Despite this crush, more species arriving - several Lactarius, Amanita muscaria - many just kicked over by some ignorant people, rather odd because the path below the birch plantation is not much used. During a short excursion off the path Enid found some nice Peziza badia , lots of small Russula and in the earth of the track, several of what turned out to be Hemimycena lactea. Well our finds were duly carried away to experiment with. The Lactarius were L serifluus (again), L camphoratus, L tabidus and L subumbonatus but the find of the day turned out to be one rather tatty specimen of Boletus impolitus, the greenish clay buff of the cap, stipe shape and slight pink flush on cutting - no other colour change - being quite distinctive. Another first for the records - but it seems to occur everywhere all over South Britain (180 records in FRDB) it has turned up further West and there is a record from outside Strenshall camp in 2005 which somehow missed our database.

Diary of a Fungus Freak

(Under Construction 12Sept06)

8th August 2006
Newby Hall. Declare fungus season to have started with trolling around stately home environs in a battery-powered invalid chariot. Large ring of Marasmius oreades on Hall lawn, being ignored by visiting public; crawl around with camera but ring too large to get satisfactory photo. Look at some Rhododendron leaves and find small thing which proves to be Dennisiella babingtonii. Obscure.
14th. August
Horbury Wyke. One or two Russula cyanoxantha under oak trees and brambles. Not being very mobile, scrape around to find Uncinula prunastri on leaves of Sloe (Prunus spinosa) hedge in Horbury village.
20th August
Hartley Bank, Horbury Wyke, Blacker Lane. Slow careful walk around local patch. Passing Sloe bush in hedge of Blacker Lane, find odd fawn incrustations on some berries. Dig out Ellis & Ellis, decide must be conidial stage of Venturia carpophila - Cladosporium carpophilum. (See what desperate straits we are driven to in absence of ‘proper’ fungi....) - but find Crinipellis stipitaria in the Wyke, same place as above R cyanoxantha which still appears.
22nd August
Hartley Bank & The Strands.
Things suddenly popping out like rockets after the recent rains and previous long warm spell. 22 species without serious search, nothing special except for probable Tubaria autochtona under a hawthorn hedge and lots of delightful Field Mushrooms and Marasmius. Tea!.
25th August.
Stocksmoor. (YWT reserve, but you wouldn’t think so, really scruffy...). 15 species including Tubaria autochtona - under hawthorn of course, but this time still attached to the dead haws which is what they are supposed to live on. First time for me so am mightily pleased. Moral, if you see a small brown toadstool under Crataegus, dig it up carefully - don’t drag it out - and if it’s growing from a dead berry you will need no other diagnosis. Also nice Clitopilus prunulus, The Miller, large and perfect but Enid doesn’t like the smell so not for eating.
26th August.
Bretton Park and YWT Reserve. One of our favourite places. We parked in the village and walked in down the drive, were surprised to see a clump of Meripilus giganteus growing straight out of the ground. On a buried stump of course. Lots of edible mushrooms again, Agaricus campestris and A sylvaticus which was nice, but the best sight was to find Boletus luridiformis under one of the beeches. These usually get mown down by the unimaginative custodians of the park or kicked over by untrained small boys, but this time there were enough big lumps left to confirm the ID by looking for the red spots on the stipe. Passing on into the wooded Reserve, find lots of Psathyrella - P. candolleana as it turns out - and a very nice golden Pluteus on a rotten log, subsequently identified as P. chrysophaeous.
28th August.
Called by a gentleman in Ossett who had these fungi in his garden and wanted to know about them. Quite nice Paxillus involutus on a bare piece of ground and the almost standard Polyporus squamosus on a dead stump. (“I wish I had a fiver for every time .....etc. etc.”) .... but I can’t think how he got my name.
30th August
Bretton Park again, this time looking at the area behind the lake. Lovely Boletus edulis and B. luridiformis, not alas in edible condition. There was however a huge and beautiful Chicken of the Woods - Laetiporus sulphureus - on each of two very large beech logs. More Clitopilus prunulus again and Amanita rubescens var. annulosulphurea - the yellow ring quite obvious to the eye; this variation is not particularly scarce (233 records in BMSFRD, back to the 19th Century) but seldom reported up here. Psathyrella prona appeared also, a new one to me, identified using Penny Cullington’s ‘Key to Psathyrella with a Red Gill Edge’ in Field Mycology Vol7(3), July 2006. See photograph.
31st August
The “Chicken” was so wonderful that I went back the next day to photograph it, finding on the way that a large crop of Horse Mushrooms had shot up overnight around a large beech tree adjacent to the car park There was also a coach party - several in fact - of large school-children in evidence taking in the Sculpture Park but fortunately they were more interested in each other than in kicking over the fungi. Another splendid starter for tea! Meanwhile Enid had been out with her walking group and returned with another heap of specimens, fortunately no difficult ones except for a dark Lactarius which I eventually keyed out to L subumbonatus. (N.B. Look at the cheilocystidia and the splendid Fungi of N. Europe Vol 2.).
Meanwhile, phoned by the Wakefield Countryside Service, would I like to advise this lady in Sandal who has Death Caps in her garden .... Whizz round there in great hope but they turn out to be just rather lovely Horse Mushrooms in dirty soil under some privet. Mis-identification due to faulty reading of Phillips’ photo’s and an over-active imagination. Pity really and I couldn’t convince her that they were edible.