Tuesday, 21 January 2020

Yes, more fungi from Dene Park




Witches' Butter, Exidia glandulosa, is an utterly amazing fungus,

Quote: "Exidia glandulosa is a wood-rotting species, typically found on dead attached branches of broadleaf trees, especially oak, occasionally hazel or beech. It is a pioneer species capable of colonizing living or recently dead wood. A study of the wood decay process in attached oak branches showed that E. glandulosa is a member of a community of eight basidiomycetous fungi consistently associated with the decay of dying branches on living trees. Specifically, its role is to disintegrate the tissue of the vascular cambium, which loosens the attached bark. It persists for some while on fallen branches and logs."




I THINK this is more likely to be on eg hazel than oak, but it is a difficult one to be sure. These fruiting bodies are a bit dried out and shrunken, but you can just see the pimples on the upper surface.

The other complication is that Witches' Butter Exidia glandulosa or E. truncata has a rather confusing sister species which is similar but coalesces and is generally called Warlock's Butter, E. plana or E. nigrescens. It is probably impossible to tell the difference at this stage of desiccation. 

This next crust fungus was found on a fallen branch. It bears at least a superficial resemblance to some of the images of Steccherinum fimbriatum, supposedly common in Hampshire at least. But it doesn't seem to have the central "fruiting" area covered with minute spines of the larger patches often pictured.



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