Leybourne Lakes

The species aggregate (probably) willow rosette gall, Rhabdophaga rosaria on Crack Willow behind the dipping pond. Hoping to cut it open to reveal the larva!

Dene Park

There seems to me to be relatively few visible macro-fungi in Dene Park, and today on a very muddy and rather miserable late afternoon turned up very little for me to photograph.


This close-up is of a crust fungus, probably the Hairy Curtain-Crust, Stereum hirsutum,  which really does seem to be very orange much of the time, whether as small tiers of brackets, or as resupinate crusts. This species is one of the commonest species recorded in the UK, found on hardwoods in very large patches and very commonly covering logs. There is another species, Stereum rameale, which is supposedly less hairy. I do find it a little difficult to be sure about differentiating these.

Just a couple of notes on Stereum rameale or aka ochraceoflavum. The habitat is said to be fallen twigs and small branches of broadleaved trees.  

Stereum hirsutum is found mainly on dead wood, but is occasionally seen on live wood, perhaps near wounds and it might be mildly parasitic. However it is mainly known as an abundant saprophyte. I wonder whether it is much more zoned and hairier at other times of year?

I assume from some of the pictures that the resupinate crust is often an earlier stage of development and the little turbinate bodies are the intermediate stage where the bracket is about to develop.

This is rather more highly magnified and showing the early stages I think - is that mycelium underneath these crusts? I think its more likely than being the hairy upper surface?

Stereum hirsutum is an all-year annual, and I think the crusty brackets fairly quickly discolour , darken and perhaps get covered in algae. However the colours of these are rather bright rich yellow to orange. Bibby has the hymenial (lower) surface as smooth, yellow-ochre to yellow-brown NOT reddening when injured. Bibby also has the upperside of the crusts as hairy-tomentose, zonate, yellow-orange, ochre to greyish-ochre. Buczacki has it as wavy, and distinctly downy-hairy.

This photo may indicate some dying off of the Stereum, possibly caused by the attack of another fungus or other pathogen.

Here are some more brackets, 2 - 5 cm diameter, on the same log, often with much darker brown centres, perhaps with a few velvety hairs glinting slightly in the flash light. I think that this is a different species of Stereum, but it might just be better developed Stereum hirsutum. The needles belong to the Douglas Fir I think, but that might be entirely incidental.. 

The flesh is tough, elastic and clearly inedible. There is no taste or smell. The spores, which I have never seen, are supposed to be white.

This is just a bit further up, and to the right of the last image.

In another place, this is a white resupinate fungus on fallen wood, unknown ID.

And in yet another spot, here are some mosses on an old stump, possibly a Sweet Chestnut.

and another species, this one with capsules,

And some stump lichen:

Sevenoaks Wildlife Reserve

We had a great walk around with the Kent Wildlife Trust on their Winter Trees Id walk. The warden had excellent inter-personal skills and made everyone feel at home. One possible improvement would be to know beforehand what everyone wanted to get out of the day, and to do a bit of personal tailoring?

Plenty of tree pictures, and then I went round the "circuit" again to try and find some fungi.

This appeared to be a double mushroom on this horizontal log covered in mosses, but when I turned it over it was poroid rather than gilled. After consulting Bibby, I thought it might perhaps be the Winter Polypore, Polyporus brumalis, and there was some support for that on the Kent Fungus Group. However it was a fairly poor photo, and of course people, however polite, could not be sure.

Polyporus brumalis is a white rot that has at least some strains that are extremely effective at attacking lignin.

On a blackened log pile I found what I thought were Turkeytail, Trametes versicolor and also Phlebia tremellosa.