Its been so very dry for so many weeks that the light rain of the past few nights has been entirely insufficient to bring out the fungi, except perhaps for some of the smallest rapid responders. Judging from today's weather, the weather is on the very point of changing!
A small group of interested people met in the morning's intermittent light drizzle at the car-park at 10 a.m. to join the Medway Valley Countryside Partnership organised fungus walk, with quite a few people who had booked not actually turning up. We were introduced to our excellent leader, Patricia Moxey, who had come over from Essex as her daughter lives in Hadlow.
We were first shown some Sainsbury's Mushrooms to illustrate cap structure, and some mushroom spawn to see the mycelium, and we discussed the place of mushrooms in nature and their ecology. Tricia also said that woodland fungi may form up to 70% of a deer's diet in the autumn as it tries to lay down food reserves for the winter. This is a very interesting thought - I had no idea!
We explored risks to fungal habitat and the apparent slow but steady decline in fungi in Europe as a whole, whether due to harvesting or possibly to pollution, perhaps particularly eutrophication by NOx or other substances.
We also talked about dormice and the strong suspicion that grey squirrels, as opportunistic feeders on almost anything, have a particular tendency to predate upon dormice young.
We moved off to see some excellently coloured Fly Agaric, Amanita muscaria, growing as usual by some birch, one of the easiest examples of mycorrhizal relationships to be found. There always used to be a fairly reliable "mushrooming" close by a tall silver birch opposite the canteen in the college every autumn, until the birch caught a disease and was felled. I haven't seen the Amanita there since, perhaps supporting the view that the fungus really does need that continuous supply of sugars in order to fruit, or perhaps survive.
Tricia talked about its hallucinogenic and toxic properties, and later we saw some more orangey caps in the shade - I did wonder whether the development of the reddish colouration is improved by sunlight in some way. In the well coloured specimens in the photograph above, you can also see that the white specks of the older cap in particular have already been largely washed off in the recent rain.
In the moist shade of the woodland canopy, some of the younger participants found a small Mycena, or Fairy's Bonnet, which Tricia suggested might have come up over night in response to the light rain. Unfortunately it was too dark under the trees to get a photograph of this one, or the other specimen which was found towards the end of the walk. Tricia took the second specimen back to try to determine species so that she could submit the record, as Dene Park is under-recorded for most groups. At this point the penny dropped and I realised that I had know Tricia's daughter and her family for many years, since Jackie had been a horticultural student at Hadlow in the mid 1990s, had settled in the village after she had finished her degree, and married a fellow student, Chris. What a small world!
We looked carefully around the beech compartment and then crossed the track into the more mixed woodland, where on a stump we found two clumps of the very common but really quite poisonous Sulphur Tuft fungus, Hypholoma fasciculare,
A little further along there were some Yellow Club-Horns or Yellow Antlers fungus, Calocera viscosa, which is supposed by some to have chemicals within it with significant anti-tumour properties. I ramped up the ISO rating to the max on the camera to make up for the poor light and still get this picture.
At this point Kevyn, the arboriculture lecturer from the College, and my colleague, joined the group. As we moved along the narrow track, I stopped to photograph a blotch leaf miner on the oak leaves, rather silvery and with a lobed margin, that I don't think I have seen before.
Kevyn and I also diverted to examine the Tulley tubes on some of the underplanting. Hopefully some of her students can be engaged at some stage in removing some of these, to benefit the young trees. Surveying the tree stock as a whole could also be a useful exercise!
We had a look at the "copparded" hornbeams on the edge of the woodland, which Tricia thought might be hundreds of years old, perhaps Elizabethan. Close to the Clearhedges Corner as we turned back alongside the road we found (I think) an old neglected coppice, which had a couple of standard stems growing up from it.
The standard stems were being well attacked by an Artists' Fungus, a Ganoderma, possibly adspersum, but perhaps applanatum, a spore examination might be required to be sure.
We discussed the immense value of tree rot fungi in ecology and biodiversity, as well as the role of gut fungi in some xylogenic (wood eating) beetles, then deviating on to talking about dormice hibernating close to ground level, in stumps or even under leaves and other aspects of woodland ecology.
Another absolutely great morning - but more was to come!
After teaching for the afternoon I went back to Dene Park as dusk fell to give Monty his walk, and have a further look for fungi. It was raining well by that stage, and actually, according to an amateur Tonbridge Weather Station we had had about 12 - 15 mm by the end of the day, a tidy amount. I wandered into the birches just further along from the Beech compartment, and found the very common Birch Polypore fungus, Piptoporus betulinus on the side of a dead Silver Birch, Betula pendula, trunk.
Fairly close to this I came across a flat-topped and fairly sharp-margined polypore on an unidentified dead tree trunk.
The pores were relatively large, even somewhat elongated along the axis of the bracket. I think this might have been the Blushing Bracket, Daedaleopsis confragosa.
Back out onto the track I walked along nearly to the junction close to the lodge roadway, and turned right into the dark path that runs parallel to, and just before the main circular path.
About 50 metres along the path I came upon a single white fungus growing out of the side of an oak tree trunk. The stem came out horizontally, turned up through 90 degrees until it was vertical, then joined the cap eccentrically. The rim was clearly inrolled, and there were the just possible remains of a veil stuck around the rim. The gills were at least partly decurrent, and could have been regarded as crowded.
It was almost certainly a Pleurotus, or related genus, and I think most likely to be the Veiled Oyster Fungus, Pleurotus dryinus, which has been recorded in squares such as TQ 63, 64 and 65 before. I think here we are in TQ63 - but I should check of course. The specimen looked pretty good for this species when compared to the images that can be seen on Google.
By now it was getting too dark to see much, although I repeatedly heard a tawny owl calling, and disturbed several woodpigeons which I could hear exploding away above the pitter-patter of raindrops.
I have to say it was really lovely in the soft misty rain and the darkening woods. Two fantastic trips in a great day!
A small group of interested people met in the morning's intermittent light drizzle at the car-park at 10 a.m. to join the Medway Valley Countryside Partnership organised fungus walk, with quite a few people who had booked not actually turning up. We were introduced to our excellent leader, Patricia Moxey, who had come over from Essex as her daughter lives in Hadlow.
We were first shown some Sainsbury's Mushrooms to illustrate cap structure, and some mushroom spawn to see the mycelium, and we discussed the place of mushrooms in nature and their ecology. Tricia also said that woodland fungi may form up to 70% of a deer's diet in the autumn as it tries to lay down food reserves for the winter. This is a very interesting thought - I had no idea!
We explored risks to fungal habitat and the apparent slow but steady decline in fungi in Europe as a whole, whether due to harvesting or possibly to pollution, perhaps particularly eutrophication by NOx or other substances.
We also talked about dormice and the strong suspicion that grey squirrels, as opportunistic feeders on almost anything, have a particular tendency to predate upon dormice young.
We moved off to see some excellently coloured Fly Agaric, Amanita muscaria, growing as usual by some birch, one of the easiest examples of mycorrhizal relationships to be found. There always used to be a fairly reliable "mushrooming" close by a tall silver birch opposite the canteen in the college every autumn, until the birch caught a disease and was felled. I haven't seen the Amanita there since, perhaps supporting the view that the fungus really does need that continuous supply of sugars in order to fruit, or perhaps survive.
In the moist shade of the woodland canopy, some of the younger participants found a small Mycena, or Fairy's Bonnet, which Tricia suggested might have come up over night in response to the light rain. Unfortunately it was too dark under the trees to get a photograph of this one, or the other specimen which was found towards the end of the walk. Tricia took the second specimen back to try to determine species so that she could submit the record, as Dene Park is under-recorded for most groups. At this point the penny dropped and I realised that I had know Tricia's daughter and her family for many years, since Jackie had been a horticultural student at Hadlow in the mid 1990s, had settled in the village after she had finished her degree, and married a fellow student, Chris. What a small world!
We looked carefully around the beech compartment and then crossed the track into the more mixed woodland, where on a stump we found two clumps of the very common but really quite poisonous Sulphur Tuft fungus, Hypholoma fasciculare,
We had a look at the "copparded" hornbeams on the edge of the woodland, which Tricia thought might be hundreds of years old, perhaps Elizabethan. Close to the Clearhedges Corner as we turned back alongside the road we found (I think) an old neglected coppice, which had a couple of standard stems growing up from it.
Another absolutely great morning - but more was to come!
After teaching for the afternoon I went back to Dene Park as dusk fell to give Monty his walk, and have a further look for fungi. It was raining well by that stage, and actually, according to an amateur Tonbridge Weather Station we had had about 12 - 15 mm by the end of the day, a tidy amount. I wandered into the birches just further along from the Beech compartment, and found the very common Birch Polypore fungus, Piptoporus betulinus on the side of a dead Silver Birch, Betula pendula, trunk.
About 50 metres along the path I came upon a single white fungus growing out of the side of an oak tree trunk. The stem came out horizontally, turned up through 90 degrees until it was vertical, then joined the cap eccentrically. The rim was clearly inrolled, and there were the just possible remains of a veil stuck around the rim. The gills were at least partly decurrent, and could have been regarded as crowded.
I have to say it was really lovely in the soft misty rain and the darkening woods. Two fantastic trips in a great day!
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