Dene Park fungi

 

Stereum sanguinolentum on the Douglas Fir in the car park. I think the browner crusts are younger ones, and that they will grey up in a few weeks or months. It would be great to check !

A few fungi from Fox Wood

 

There were a few fungi along the path into Fox Wood, including this Hornbeam trunk with some quite extensive but largely dried up crusts of the Silverleaf Fungus, Chondrostereum purpureum. The crusts were partly resupinate, partly reflexed. The effect was very similar to Stereum crusts, and that was what I thought I had found, but one thing that struck me at the time was the obviously whitish upper surface visible on the reflexed portions. This was reasonably hairy but the hairs were still obviously white. Stereum species upper surfaces are generally grey to brown, or rather darkened. 

A couple of what appeared to be more recent crusts were distinctly more purple in the captured images (below) than to the eye, and when I saw the final one, it finally clicked that I was looking at Chondrostereum, not a Stereum species. 

When rubbed to check for "bleeding", a dark smear appeared - the dark region below the context possibly?  This was also fairly clearly visible in cross section. The habitat is a reasonable fit - a preference for newly dead wood is mentioned in Laessoe and Peterson, as found here.

A little further on, there was a more obviously decayed trunk of another Hornbeam multistem, with extensive fungal fruiting, in this case I thought of Schizopora paradoxa, the Split Porecrust.