Parasola conopilus, Conical Brittlestem

There is a patch of this growing. The caps are all bolt upright, standing to attention. The caps when they are wet look red-brown/leathery and shine as if they have been polished. When they are dry they dull and fade in colour, becoming brown and less distinctive, eventually becoming white/cream and opaque and loosing all shred of shine. The drying can be reversed and the brown return, but after a bit the reddish colour doesn’t reappear. Groups of over a hundred caps can turn up, usually on path sides or on woodchips, and can cover yards along a path side strip.

Link to fungus photos 2010.

Link to species notes.

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Volvariella bombacinia, Silky Rosegill

This is a hairy looking cap that tends to grow inside old fallen hollow tree trunks on their side. The cap is roughly conical. It develops inside a volva, a cream coloured membranous sac, which breaks and leaves its ragged remains at the base of the stem. The cap that comes out is initially very ‘hairy’, but the hairs reduce with age. The stem has no ring, and is quite smooth. It grows curved to support the cap in the right position.  It can get quite big, dinner plate size, in the right conditions.

The red oval shaped object in the photo is a damson plumb that had rolled into the trunk.

Link to fungus photos 2010.

Link to species notes.

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Ganoderma australe, Southern Bracket

The most noticeable tree with this bracket had as many brackets as could be reached removed from the tree earlier this year. The tree is dead, so it made no difference to the tree, and it would have taken some serious work to remove them. They are structures that last for many years usually. They are woody, tough plates of growth that extend horizontally from the trunk surface. The top surface is brown and the underside is white, very finely pored. To remove them would take saws.  There are two Ganoderma brackets in Abney,  G.  australe tend to be the neater smoother bracket. It has more regular rounded brackets. Below the brackets is fine, chocolate brown spores that coat the ivy leaves around them. On some hot days they can be seen ‘smoking’ away from the underside in a light draft.

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Link to species notes.

Link to photos of fungi 2010.

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Auricularia auricula-judae, Ear Fungus

In the recent rain this has expanded wildly. It is a jelly fungus that absorbs water when it is wet and shrivels when it is dry. The extremely dry state is pretty much undetectable. The newer growth is the normal light pink and the expanded wet growth is red and huge in comparison. Both types wobble satisfactorily. The black variant has yet to show up, it may yet appear. It was last up and about at the beginning of the year.

Link to Species Notes.

Link to Photos of fungi 2010.

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Mycena speira, Bark Bonnet.

I’ve seen this every year for a long time. It grows in the recessed fissures on fallen ash tree bark, on the big logs. Its a tiny thing, the one I collected today was 6 mm across. It generally has a grey/brown center to the cap which radiates radially towards the edges but fades before it gets there. The rim is white. The gills are white and the stem is white, but the stem does have a slightly ocher flushed base. It does dry paler and eventually becomes white, but I haven’t seen this happen very often.As a rule in Abney, if it is tiny with a grey-ish center that has those lines of colour more strongly radial, this is the thing.

Link to Species notes.

Link to Photos of Fungi 2010.

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Coprinopsis lagopus

This seems to be a specialist of wood chip piles. It begins as a oval capsule that pushed through the wood chips covered in white-ish fibers. It grows and expands becoming grey and the fibrous veil is spread making holes through which the grey can be seen. The shape goes from conical, to almost flat, to upturned at the edges and usually splitting radially. The cap self digests to reduce the flat cap down to a small disc at the top of the stalk. And it al happens quite fast. They are only small-ish caps, but the life cycle is less then a day to the bare stalks which slowly split at the end and vanish.

Link to Species notes.

Link to Photos of Fungus 2010.

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Agrocybe rivulosa.

This is a species from warmer climates that only grows on wood chip piles now it is in this country. It has found the pile in the center by the chapel, and it was there last year and it is growing strong this year. It has a cream cap and it wrinkles as it matures to roughly radial wrinkles. As an Agrocybe it has gills that start pale and mature to brown. The ring is fragile and often disintegrates. The cap can’t be mistaken.

Link to Fungi photos 2010.

Link to species notes.

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Coprinellus micaceus, Glistening Ink Cap

This is one of the guaranteed caps that come up in Abney each year. At times it is hard to find a path which doesn’t have a display somewhere along it. It begins looking quite orange and with micaceus (speckled pieces that glisten as if crystaline) pieces scattered over the surface. In this photos there are few of them left as they wash off easily in the rain, and it has been raining. They will pale as they grow to a cream colour and the edges will mature. As they mature the cap produces an enzyme that digests the cap and this helps to distribute the spores. This is the first cap that I tried to get a spore print from. In my ignorance about how to get a spore print I propped it up in wet sand and left it on a side table over night. It didn’t just drop the spores downwards, it produced about a meter in radius of black spores over everything. It fortunately hoovered out of the carpet. This is an effective mechanism even without a draft.

Link to species notes.

Link to Fungus photos 2010.

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Tulsanella violea.

This is a little pink/lilac encrusting fungus I found last year for the first time and it is back this year. It grows on hardwoods with or without bark and tends to have bumps on the surface. It is more strongly violet coloured when it is wet and pinker when dry. It can cover large areas or just be in small patches as here.

Link to notes on the species.

Link to photos of fungi for 2010.

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Bjerkandera adusta, Smoky Bracket.

The patch that is growing by a main path at the moment is worth a look. It began with an almost encrusting growth which was totally white. The center of the growth became brown and white brackets developed in the center of the brown areas. These brackets are now developing to be the major feature of the growth.

The growth on the top of the log is perhaps more interesting. It too began as white and became brown in the center of the growth but it hasn’t so far produced any brackets. Usually the brackets are a devise for allowing the spores to be released downwards so encrusting growth happens from projections out from the wood pointing down. This isn’t needed when the wood is downwards facing so encrusting growth on the downwards facing wood is common. This growth is almost upwards facing so I wouold have expected brackets, but they aren’t developing as yet.

Link to notes on this species.

Link to fungi photos for 2010.

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