Possibly Basidioradulum radula, but....

 

Could be this, with a white margin according to Leif Goodson, on a newly fallen branch on the west path in Dene Park. However I find Radulomyces molaris far more readily, and my gut feeling is that this is Radulomyces again!!.

 

Hothfield searching unsuccessfully for the Great Grey Shrike

 One possible glimpse of the Shrike, but mainly fungi today. 

This is lumpy enough to be Phlebia, but a rather capped version, on a very decayed log.  Unlikely to be Phlebia radiata though I would have said. 

I think this could be Smoky Bracket, Bjerkandera adusta, and possibly a few Sulphur Tufts, Hypholoma fasciculare. (Note from February 2024, this could also be Bjerkandera fumosa)

This just MIGHT be very young Smoky Bracket, judging on its very white margins.

I think that this might be Stereum gausapatum, the Oak Curtain Crust. Abrasion caused some reddening on the left, mid-centre.

Dene Park fungi

 This is that common Edged-Chocolate form of Turkeytail again, a lovely version of Trametes versicolor. Slightly out of focus I am afraid.

 

Ischnoderma benzoinum perhaps and Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa at Dene Park

 

A bit confused by these brackets: on one of the pine logs used as a car park divider at Dene Park, near Tonbridge. Pores about 3/mm but with no sign of mazegill structure, brackets relatively thin and sharp-edged, pores 5 mm long or less, mid-brown flesh, cap dark brown feeling a bit felty, with clearly obvious but thin whitish edge. No sign of yellowish colours. Creamy pore surface only gradually darkens to a tan brown when collected, does not quickly bruise.

The Coral Slime Mould Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa found on a fallen possibly hornbeam trunk of really well rotted wood looked amazing. 

The whiter outer surface is said to be fluffier as it is covered in the spores being released. 

The dead Elm on the Access Trail finally shows some more obvious fungal life!

 Very glad to finally find some fungal fruiting bodies on the long-dead Elm along the trail. 

First there was some lovely Wrinkled Peach, my first ever as far as I know, and gorgeously coloured, even if not obviously wrinkled. Closely associated with Elm - it is so satisfactory when things turn up exactly where they are supposed to be!

Secondly, the rather less attractive Tripe Fungus, Auricularia mesenterica, also closely associated with dead Elm. These fruiting bodies seemed rather old and dried out. 

Here is the underside of one section, coming back to life a little.

Also note the beetle holes in the log.

Alder Bracket, Mensularia radiata, confirmed

 

Returning to the waterworks by the stream in Dene Park, I was able to confirm that one of the Alders is well attacked by the Alder Bracket, Mensularia radiata, as suspected earlier in the year when I had seen the old decaying brackets. Great to have a guess turn out OK!

Green Elf Cup, Dene Park

Having found "Green Elf Club" staining on several fallen branches over the years I was very glad to finally find fruiting bodies on this particular one. Sadly these have dried out a little and the edges have started to turn in.

This could be Chlorociboria aeruginascens, the Green Elf Cup, or Chlorociboria aeruginosa, the Turquoise Elf Cup. The two species are indistinguishable except microscopically, eg on spore size. The apothecia, only a few mm across, usually have a very short stipe either centrally or laterally located, as seen here. C. aeruginascens tends to have a more lateral stipe than aeruginosa, but this is definitely not diagnostic. 

The underside of the apothecia are slightly bluer-green and more felty than the upper side, as in the First Nature description. This also mentions the fruit bodies falling sideways as they age.

The previous records for Dene Park only name C. aeruginosa, surprisingly as it is supposedly the rarer. This sample and the others could be either or both of those species.  

 

Queendown Warren

 

This looks to me like a typical mine of the Hawthorn Midget, Phyllonorycter corylifoliella (Hübner, 1796), tending to locate over the midrib or one of the main veins. A silvery surface to the mine with spirals or rings of brown specks of frass quite obvious, especially in comparison to the silvery mines of Phyllonorycter leucographella. This appears to be a very common mine, found a bit more often in East Kent than West Kent. The mines are found increasingly through the summer into the autumn. I found about a dozen possibles today, so why don't I see them at Dene Park? Is it because this is a moth that prefers more open woodlands? I have seen it around towards the gravel pits, so this seems possible. I should check the hedgerows perhaps.

This leaf seems to have a fairly thick frass-filled gallery leading to a blotch, which was now untenanted. There was an egg on the underside of the leaf. I came across about 5 similar mines at Queendown. Could this be Ectoedemia atricollis (Stainton, 1857), although it doesn't look much like some of the other examples I suspect to be this species, where the gallery follows the leaf margin closely and seems rather narrower.

 

These curled-over brown lobe tips look a bit like very old mines of Parornix anglicella (Stainton, 1850). 

Leafminers in Dene Park

Stigmella hemargyrella on Beech, the one with the egg away from the midrib.

Possibly the Pinch-barred Pigmy, Ectoedemia atricollis (Stainton, 1857) on Hawthorn, probably specifically the Midland Hawthorn, Crataegus laevigata. There are a number of other possibilities for the mine ID, and I could not find the larva to confirm or not. However one positive sign was that I did find the egg on the margin of the leaf on the underside, as expected for Ectoedemia atricollis. If correct, it is the first time I have seen it in Dene Park, but I may have come across it on a day a few years ago down by the gravel pits. This example would be quite an early date for mines of this species. The larva tends to form a corridor initially, which very often follows the margin of the leaf around, but eventually forms a blotch mine. as shown here This caterpillar can be found on other Rosaceous hosts, such as apple and cherry as well as hawthorn.

The Scarce Aspen Midget, Phyllonorycter sagitella,

 

On the Aspen semi-sapling to the east of the main path up from the dog-bin, about half a dozen mines, most vacated. This used to be a rare micro-moth in the UK, confined to the wetter west, although with quite a wide distribution across Europe, but has now spread extensively, with quite a few records in the Southeast, including Kent, with quite a few records on the Kent Moths Facebook page.

I suppose these could be the older mines of the first generation, as the pupae appear to have already hatched out into adults rather than overwintering as pupae, which I assume that they do? But are there genuinely two generations, KMG seem to suggest not?

Fascinating to see the split open pupal cases half projecting from some of the mines, indicating the departure of the next generation of adults. 

Coed Fron Wylt

Lovely walk around the main path, ash trees looking a bit worse than last year.

Enjoyed finding an empty first generation mine of Stigmella tityrella on a Beech leaf, underside egg neatly placed in a midrib axil, mine wiggling between two veins towards the margin before the larva eventually exited the leaf.

A few more leaf mines

 

On Hazel I found a couple nfy (new for year),. so that's both the Phyllonorycter mine species on this tree sorted for 2022!

A single first cycle Phyllonorycter nicellii, the Phyllonorycter found on the underside of Hazel leaves, was spotted on the main circuit, near the dead Ash trees. Hardly any other Hazel was actually checked. As usual you see the nibbled windows around the edge of the mine from the upperside, together with the pulled up ridge, and then the silvered lower epidermis from the underside. The common name is the Red Hazel Midget.

And close by there was a single Phyllonorycter coryli, the larva of the nut leaf blister moth, with the silvered upper epidermis visible in the highly distorted valley of the puckered up leaf. 

 

Early leaf mines

 

My first finds this year of several Phyllonorycter esperella, the Dark Hornbeam Midget, on the upper-surface of the leaves of Hornbeam, Carpinus betulus. 

This could perhaps be Stigmella lapponica, on what looks like Downy Birch, Betula pubescens, whose egg should be on the underside of the leaf, but Stigmella confusella is another possibility with its egg on the upperside of the leaf

Eriocrana salopiella (probably)

 

A very nice find of an early mine of the Small Birch Purple, Eriocrana salopiella, (Stainton, 1854). The genus name Eriocrana refers to the adults' fluffy heads and translates roughly as "woolly-headed", and it's salopiella because it was first found to be identified near Shrewsbury by Mr. Stainton. 

As it's quite early in the year, it is more likely to be salopiella rather than Eriocrana sparrmannella, which is a bit more of a summer species.

 

Holly Hill

 

A lovely woodland walk with Mark Pritchard.

There were some amazing trees, including a few giant Beeches. This one had dropped a very large branch, with Beech Tarcrust and also this Mazegill bracket fungal fruiting body on it. So far nothing seems to fit as far as an ID goes!

The underside of the Mazegill,

And a more closely cropped view

and the upper surface of the brackets, felt dry and a bit fluffy:

Here are some pictures of the tree, the first taken against the morning light from the North:

The main trunk

A closer view of the basal cavity

Coleophora species on Hawthorn

 

I have been able to find a few larval cases on Hawthorn, mainly Crataegus monogyna or the hybrid I think. The ones I found look similar to each other and are I am afraid unidentifiable down to species, but they are still fascinating to see, so here is a picture that I was quite pleased with, not the one taken with the phone!

 

Wet Beech trees

Chilton Magic Garden

Peniophora cinerea on dead Ash

 

On some of the dead young Ash trees at Hucking there was a grey crust. The characteristics were firstly there was no obvious differently coloured margin, which was also quite sharply edged and adhering closely to the bark (adnate). The colouration of the thin dry crust was what I would call dove grey. Much of the surface of the crust was criss-crossed with small jagged cracks (it was "ribose") which would have appeared as it dried out, so that it appeared quite scaly.

I also found something similar on some of the coppiced regrowth, on stools deeper in the woods.

 

Alder Bracket, Mensularia radiata I think

 

Very old, broken down Alder Bracket at the corner of Dene Park where the pipe inlet is, and there is a small collection of tall Black Alder trees by the side of the stream. The remnants of the brackets were exactly where the books predicted, on a dead standing Alder trunk. One of the photos in the TMA Fungi App is quite similar. However this identification was largely based on eliminating other possibilities - in other words, "what else could it be"?

The caps are more or less correct, assuming that the pores beneath have been largely eroded (worn away), and the confluence of the remaining material looks fairly typical, The flesh of the annual brackets is said to be at first soft, but becomes hard, woody and red-brown as the brackets age, as I have assumed is the case here.

The name has been regularly changed and Inonotus radiatus is still very commonly used in the reference books. The BMS recognises it as Mensularia radiatus. TMA Fungi has it, somewhat unusually, in its latest iteration, Xanthoporia radiata (Sowerby) P. Karst. 

Could this be a much less decayed version, on a nearby trunk, or is it something else entirely? 

(confirmed at the end of October, when fresher)