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.