Stereum serendipity

Wandering through the Northeast edge of a wet and muddy Dene Park today meandering through the Yew copse towards the Alders down by the waterworks, there were a few patchy finds to be made. Also there was an opportunity to weed three Laurel seedlings, every little helps! As you move off the car park, the first compartment has a number of Beech, but as you move up the hill there is quite a dense cluster of youngish Birch trees, with some standard Oak. Here is a view of the Birch, note the dense stems. It is quite easy to find some Stereum and Schizopora in this area.

On a fallen Alder by the weir I found what I think was a young fairly flexible Stereum subtomentosum (Pouzar) nicely orange overall but clearly white-edged. This is generally called the Yellowing Curtain Crust, and it should have released a bit of yellow fluid when cut - which of course I forgot to test for, even though I had deliberately brought my knife with me for the first time. |A scratch of the lower surface is the recommended approach.

The brackets should be quite narrowly attached, about 3 - 7 cm across and 1 - 2 mm thick, and irregularly wavy at the edges. These were also obviously much less hairy than Stereum hirsutum, hence subtomentosum, but the hairiness is apparently quite variable according to the interweb. Spores should be being released in summer and autumn and the spore print should be white to a very light tan in colour.

There were also apparently older outgrowths further along the trunk, showing the very significant differences in appearance as the "ears" age,

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.

Another crust in Dene Park, Antrodia albida I think

A "Pore-Crust"??

Possibly Antrodia albida, one of the commoner Antrodia species in the UK. Pores quite "polygonal" 1 mm or more across, tubes a few mm long, Slightly light brown or strong cream in main colour, whitish underneath the tubes and at the edges.

Fungi at Dene Park.

I was pointed in the direction of this lovely burst of sunshine by a friendly lady dog walker. I believe this is Yellow Brain, Yellow Trembler, Golden Jelly Fungus, Tremella. It is possibly Tremella mesenterica, rather than its sister species, Tremella aurantia. 

T. mesenterica is said to be the more "slimy" of the two, while T. aurantia is regarded as more matte.

This was quite an attractive pinkish crust fungus, which I haven't tracked down yet.

Training Toby at Leybourne

I had a shortish look around some of the mined leaves.

Phyllonorycter rajella on both Alnus glutinosa and Alnus incana (as pictured, on the underside of the leaf)

Phyllonorycter kellemanella = kleeemannella on Alnus glutinosa, one still with an active caterpillar.

Phyllonorycter stettinensis on Alnus glutinosa. The crease runs vertically up this photograph. The mine on the upperside of the leaf spills over a lateral vein.

Note how the brown discolouration has spread, but has not completely replaced the green. 

Fenusa dohrnii on Alnus glutinosa

Incurvaria pectinea on Alnus glutinosa

Maine Coastal Botanic Garden

Carder Bee on Salvia.

American Goldfinch

Drone Fly, on interpretation board.

Cricket (?) on path

Myrtle Warbler, in woods

Downy Woodpecker, on Birch

Downy Woodpecker on Birch

Great Northern Diver, in winter plumage, on Back River, Boothbay.

Dark-eyed Junco:

Witch Hazel:

Sassafras:

Phyllonorycter and Caloptilia on Field Maple

At the far end of the Access Trail woodland shaw, where we put the extra brick footings down the other year, there was a small Field Maple with a few folded leaf tip lobes that looked like Caloptilia mine follow-on folds.

This turned out to be Phyllonorycter acerifoliella, (Zeller, 1839), the Maple Midget, a bi-voltine leaf miner. The mines can be found in small numbers in May and, more frequently, in September and October. These mines are presumably partly the current generation of mines, and so some should really contain larvae or pupae that are about to over-winter.

The pupa should be blackish brown in a tight, thin-walled cocoon that is attached to the floor of the mine; all frass is accumulated in the opposite corner of the mine.

First seen from the upperside, then the underside:

and here is another example:

This is another, more recent mine, which I cannot identify, as it doesn't look at all like typical Phyllonorycter acerifoliella. It could possibly be Phyllonorycter joanissii from Norway Maple, which this mine closely resembles, but this is generally judged very unlikely. In the past Andy Banthorpe has identified this type of mine away from the edge as atypical Phyllonorycter acerifoliella.

Again, first from the upperside, then the underside:

a closer view:

Hopefully these Phyllonorycter acerifoliella folded leaf lobe mines will not be confused again with Caloptilia leaf lobe folds, as I first did!!

Now this looks more like a Caloptilia:

Viewed first from the upperside, then the underside:

On Field Maple, Acer campestre, in the UK this would seem to be most likely to be Caloptilia semifascia  (Haworth, 1828), the "Maple Slender". This is found on the Field Maple in the UK

The very early mine is a gallery leading soon to a small triangular or squarish blotch. Later the larvae move out to form up to three successive tubes or cones by folding the tips of leaves downwards, in which they live. On this plant there were usually only one or two folded leaf lobes per leaf. The larvae are said to be greenish with a lighter head.

The mines are supposed to occur in June - July and the ones shown here do generally look quite fairly old. Pupation is said to be in a flat, parchment-like, shining, yellowish white cocoon on either side of the leaf, but generally near the margin. I imagine that pupae are quite difficult to find in July(ish), and I haven't found any yet. The moth then flies until October, and after hibernating, again in May, before egg-laying.

However, another minor possibility on Field Maple is Caloptilia rufipennella (Hubner, 1796), which is found almost entirely on Sycamore and only rarely on Field Maple in the UK, although apparently on a wider range of Acers, including again Field Maple, on the continent. This species was only first identified on any Acer species in the UK in 1970, and is still a bit local in its distribution although spreading well. Because of its rarity on other hosts, at least according to current records, we can fairly discount it as a likely record in this case. It also has to be said that the information about host preference on different web-sites is quite contradictory in my view.

The initial feeding blotch mines are very difficult to find, and distinguish from other feeding marks, again in my limited experience, and I haven't identified one at all yet.