L F S G Newsletter No. 25 Spring 2009 33333333333333 Recording the Fungi of Leicestershire & Rutland Page - 1 - LEICESTERSHIRE FUNGI STUDY GROUP Committee 2009 Chairman Richard Iliffe Tel: 01455 612769 17 Island Close Hinckley Leicester LE10 1LN Treasurer Alison Joyce Tel: 07957 457061 113 Darklands Road Swadlincote Derby DE11 0PQ Librabrian Vacant Recorder Dr Tom Hering Tel: 01509 672664 33 Langley Drive Kegworth Derby DE74 2DN Secretary Alison Joyce Tel: 07957 457061 113 Darklands Road Swadlincote Derby DE11 0PQ Editor Robert Joyce Tel: 0781 7920030 113 Darklands Road Swadlincote Derby DE11 0PQ Committee Members Roger Rixon Tony Prior Dr Antony Fletcher Dr Peter Long The group library is held at the Leicestershire Museums Collections Resources Centre at Barrow on Soar. To arrange a visit to borrow or return a book please contact either Anona Finch or Carolyn Holmes Tel. 01509 815514 or, if unavailable, try Holly Hayes Tel. 0116 267 1950. We are pleased to acknowledge all the help and support we receive from the Leicestershire County Council Environmental Resources team. CONTENTS Chairman’s Notes 3 Swithland Wood Report 12th October 2008 4 The Inkcaps 5 Fungi Crossword Puzzle 7 Foray Records in 2007 and 2008 8 Interview with the Chairman 9 Martinshaw Wood Report 14th August 2008 10 Cropston Water Centre 15th October 2008 11 Book Review: “Mushroom Miscellany” by Patrick Harding 13 English Names for Fungus Families 14 Cordyceps – Carnivorous fungi!! 15 Photographs 16 FRONT COVER: Oyster Mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) © Mike Middleton Page - 2 - Chairman’s Notes Our last Newsletter was in the spring of 2007. Hopes of a 2008 follow-up were delayed because of concerns about the high costs of printing relative to our subscription income. We agreed, however, that the expenditure was worthwhile, and maybe we can make a few savings without losing quality. I hope that you will enjoy the style and content of this issue. It has been collated and edited by Rob Joyce and we are greatly indebted to him for his skill, enthusiasm and hard work Several long-term projects were mentioned in 2007. One target that we have achieved was the setting up of a website. Thanks to the efforts of Rob Joyce, with advice from the Records Centre at Holly Hayes and support from Tony Fletcher, we now have a very competent website that explains what we do and, hopefully, gives an indication of the pleasure we get from doing it! For those members who have not yet visited the web pages the address is: www.leicsfungi.btik.com Tom Hering has brought our recording up-to-date and all our finds to the end of 2007 are now on our database and ready for transfer to the Records Centre at Holly Hayes. This task is of course never-ending, and the 2008 records now have to be entered, and 2009 is already producing data! Thanks are due to Tom for dedicating so much time to this task each year. During 2008 we entered all the herbarium specimens held at the Barrow on Soar museum into our records database. Tom Hering again did most of the work, guided by Tony Fletcher, and with a few of us as occasional assistants. Tom’s next project is to bring our Vice-county check-list up to date so that we know how many species we have found in Leicestershire and Rutland, and have some idea of how frequent or rare they are. Using this information we can then move on to drafting a Red-data list of local fungi. These tasks become more complex the more one learns about them. Both will require careful thought and a great deal of work. Looking back at the forays we have two autumn seasons to review. Tom has given us some notes on unusual finds, and I have included some 2008 notes that were written soon after the events. Everybody will remember that 2007 was cool and wet, except for a very dry September, and that the fungi were well below average. 2008 was better and more productive, though strange. The cool and damp summer, particularly July and August, brought the fungi on in a prolific early flush, and we thought we were in for a bumper season. Then, suddenly, all the common and familiar toadstools disappeared and, during the peak month of October, although conditions seemed perfect, the fungi did not respond. The common mushrooms and toadstools were missing but, for reasons unknown, we found various unusual or rare species. Most were identified but I was personally frustrated by a number of small brown jobs and several Mycena look-alikes with strange spores that I was unable to identify, even to genus. Part of the problem, of course, is taking a dozen collections home from a foray and not having enough time to work on them all. With hindsight it is better to work thoroughly on one or two, and bin the others, rather than to spend ten minutes on each and identify none satisfactorily! I hope this strikes a chord with other mycologists and that I am not just parading my own inadequacies. Richard Iliffe Page - 3 - Swithland Wood Report 12th October 2008 Swithland Wood is normally one of the The best way of identifying this species in most productive sites in Charnwood for the field is from the spore colour – rusty fungi, but for some reason fruit-bodies brown and not the very dark brown of were thin on the ground this particular Sulphur Tuft spores. Spore deposits can weekend, possibly because the early flush often be found on the lower caps in a during a very damp autumn had exhausted dense cluster. their fruiting energy. We listed only forty species, most of them relatively common We found a strikingly scarlet Russula in and found every year. the group that are collectively called The Sickeners due to their emetic properties. We did, however, find some that were There are several, and they are worthy of note. We saw several groups of separated by the tree with which they the Dark Honey Fungus Armillaria associate. In this case we found the ostoyae, on old stumps, possibly of beech. Beechwood Sickener Russula nobilis These were a bit ‘over the hill’, but soon (Russula mairei in older field guides). after we found a good cluster of Pholiota Another Russula found nearby has also squarrosa, the Shaggy Scalycap, growing had a name change - the Rosy Brittlegill around the base of a living oak trunk, and Russula aurora, which was formerly the photographers at last had something to called R. rosea. This is one of my hold their attention. favourites and is a lovely pink colour, growing with beech and not at all common locally. Another attractive pink toadstool was Mycena rosea, the Rosy Bonnet - a species that was first recorded locally only a few years ago, now we seem to be finding it quite frequently. A good Charnwood species, seldom seen anywhere else in the county, is Amanita excelsa, the Grey Spotted Amanita. This name illustrates the difference from the lethally poisonous A. pantherina, the Pholiota squarrosa (c) Rob Joyce Panther Cap, which has white, not grey, spots on the cap. We have never We also found Pholiota alnicola, the Alder recorded this latter species in Scalycap, a closely related species that is Leicestershire. not at all common. This can be confusing to identify as it grows in clusters and looks This was a very pleasant and enjoyable very like Hypholoma fasciculare, the walk, in excellent weather. It was a shame Sulphur Tuft. It can grow on alders, that there was not more to see. Over though we usually find it on other some thirty years of taking an interest in deciduous trees. In this case it was fungi I have learned that there is nothing growing on an old stump that was in a predictable about them! well-drained and dry location and very unlikely to have been alder. Richard Iliffe Page - 4 - The Inkcaps Most of us know what the Inkcap fungi are like. They are toadstools with a spore-print that is black or nearly so, and their range of colours is restricted - from white to dark grey, with some of them dull reddish-brown when young. They vary greatly in size, as the Shaggy Inkcap may be up to eight inches tall, while the Pleated Inkcap that we find on lawns is a delicate thing, usually under one inch in diameter. The gills, compared with those of most other toadstools, are very thin and very closely spaced. In some, this property has led to the feature that gives rise to the 'Inkcap' name. If the gills remained intact in a large inkcap, the spores liberated from the upper part of the gill might often fail to fall clear, owing to catching on the gill lower down. So in these larger species, such as the Shaggy Inkcap, the spores ripen progressively upwards from the bottom edge of the gill. Once the spores have been dispersed, that part of the gill is dissolved by enzymes, and drips away as a liquid, which is black from the remaining spores that it contains. A few years ago, Derrick Palmer demonstrated to us that the black liquid from the Coprinus comatus (c) Tom Hering Shaggy Inkcap could actually be used as ink. Some popular handbooks contain the statement that flies feeding on this black liquid are the major means of dispersal of the fungus. This is not so; about a hundred years ago Buller demonstrated that the vast majority of spores fall clear, and are dispersed by air currents, as in other toadstools.