Both a friend and I had the pleasure of trecking around parts of the New Forest with a well-respected mycologist at the weekend. As you can very well imagine, we came across a wide variety of fungi – notably corticioids and polypores. Unfortunately, the poor light levels rendered getting decent photos of corticioids quite tricky (many were on standing hosts), so beyond some rather frequent Amylostereum laevigatum, Byssomerulius corium, Cylindrobasidium evolvens, Schizopora paradoxa and Vuilleminia comedens (which themselves were tricky to get good photos of) there weren’t many other opportunities. Regretfully, I therefore share below some images of poroid fungi and some larger Ascomycetes, though I hope you can nonetheless appreciate the finds!
We’ll start with a really cool find and a find that is my first for the species – the candlesnuff fungus, though not the stereotypical one! In this case, we have the candlesnuff of beech husks, known as Xylaria carpophila. As is evident in the species epithet, it likes to munch away on seed husks. Unlike its companion, it’s also much more slender and harder to spot. Your best shot is to peer into the leaf layer on the forest floor and hunt for some white hairs emerging from between leaves and from exposed husks.
We now move on to some splendid examples of Kretzschmaria deusta, in both its anamorphic and teleomorphic state. The first set of shots is showing ‘kretz’ tucked neatly within a very tight compresion fork of a large beech, with cambial dieback stretching quite far up the insides of the stems. Certainly a site for future failure! The following images show anamorphic fruiting bodies upon / ajacent to Ganoderma australe (again on beech – note that we were also told that Ganoderma applanatum is genuinely rare in the New Forest, with most finds being Ganoderma australe) and then on the underside of a very decayed beech log and finally a failed end. As both my friend and I remarked, this trip changes our perspective on the fungus, and we now recognise it as an important species in the effective decomposition of decaying wood from – or upon – dead (parts of) the host tree.
Moving towards the Basidiomycetes, the first set of photos to share is of Ganoderma pfeifferi on – you guessed it – beech! Honestly, this tree species is superb for fungi and probably the best of all native trees as regards to diversity and abundance. Some of the brackets on this beech has at least 20 sets of ‘growths’, suggesting they could be up to 20 years old!
Rather similar to the Gano is this duo of Fomes fomentarius. On a large dysfunctional lateral of a beech (who would have guessed…!?) that has subsided to the ground, we can see the two sporophores hiding amongst brash.
To round off (as I’m running out of time to write this post after a busy day at work!) I also share some Phellinus ferreus (now known as Fuscoporia ferrea). I won’t even bother noting the host as you’ll know already, and in both cases the sporophores are upon dead parts fallen from the host. Do note that the fungus also occurs on attached but dysfunctional (i.e. dead) parts of living hosts of species other than beech, too!
Arboriculture 