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.
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,
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!
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.
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)
This appears to be Trametes gibbosa, the Lumpy Bracket, on a stump at Ellington Park, Ramsgate. Identified, with "some trepidation" through the ID apps, but it does look very possible.
To my surprise, this appears to be very well developed brackets of Bjerkandera adusta, Smoky Bracket, on the large branch of an unknown tree in Ellington Park.
