Earpick fungus

09 Friday Nov 2018

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Auriscalpium vulgare, British fungi, Cathays Cemetery, Earpick fungus, fungi on conifer cones, fungi on pine cones, rare fungi

During a wander around Cardiff’s Cathays Cemetery last Friday, I found my first Earpick fungi (Auriscalpium vulgare).

Now, you might think Earpick is a very odd name for a fungus – you certainly wouldn’t want to use them to clean your ears out! – but it’s actually quite logical. Auriscalpium is a combination of the Latin words auris, meaning ear, and scalpare, the verb ‘to scratch’. The stem of the fungus certainly does look quite scratchy, as does the underside of the cap, with its mass of tiny cone-shaped rods. And it’s those rods that are the connection to the word ‘ear’ in the fungi’s name – have you ever seen a magnified photo of the sensory hair cells of the human inner ear?

Vulgare just means common, though this fungus is certainly not that – when I checked the biological database for Wales, I found only 10 previous recorded sightings.

These fungi were growing at the base of a conifer but I didn’t realise until I started reading up about them when I got home that the fungi nearly always grow on the rotting cones of pines and other conifers. I didn’t notice any cones but they must have been there, under the moss and grass. Fascinating!

Butter cap anyone?

28 Sunday Oct 2018

Posted by sconzani in autumn, fungi, nature

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autumn fungi, British fungi, Butter cap, Butter cap mushroom, fungus, Rhodocollybia butyracea

Here’s a fungus I can actually identify! This is the Butter cap, a name that’s so much easier to say than its scientific name Rhodocollybia butyracea.

181028 Butter cap fungus (2)

Thanks to the most excellent First Nature website, I can tell you that Rhodocollybia is from rhodo, meaning ‘pink’ (a reference to the pinkish tinge of the mushroom’s gills), and collybia means ‘small coin’, while the epithet butyracea means ‘buttery’ (but not in taste – it’s a reference to the greasiness of the cap).

181028 Butter cap fungus (1)

Just peachy

06 Saturday Oct 2018

Posted by sconzani in autumn, fungi, nature

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British fungi, Elm tree, fungi on Elm, fungus, Rhodotus palmatus, Wrinkled peach

I was over the moon when I spotted this first little burst of peachiness growing on an old, ivy-smothered log a week ago.

181006 Wrinkled peach (1)

Why? Because this is one of the few fungi I can positively identify by sight, and it’s quite the rarity in most parts of Britain these days because it grows on Elm, a tree that is itself increasingly rare in Britain nowadays. According to the Forest Research website, 60 million Elm trees have been killed by Dutch Elm disease since it was first discovered in Britain in the 1920s, the majority of those dying since the 1970s.

181006 wrinkled peach (2) 181006 wrinkled peach (3)

This fungus is the wonderfully named Wrinkled peach (Rhodotus palmatus). Rhodotus comes from the Ancient Greek Rhodon, meaning rose, and palmatus is Latin and means ‘shaped like a hand’, presumably a reference to the surface texture of the fungus’s cap resembling the lines on the palm of a hand.

181006 Wrinkled peach (4)

Incredibly, I found nine of these fungi on two different logs, and then, on a subsequent visit, found another one growing on a log a few metres away. Presumably the logs are the remains of an Elm that was cut down when Dutch Elm disease was at its height.

181006 wrinkled peach (7)

As you can see from my photos, the fungi range from the very young and fresh to the aging and wrinkled and decaying. Wrinkled peach, when seen at all, is usually found between July and November, so I have a few more weeks yet to enjoy these little beauties.

181006 Wrinkled peach (8) 181006 Wrinkled peach (9)

It’s a brittlestem

25 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by sconzani in fungi, nature

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British fungi, brittlestem fungi, Conical brittlestem, fungus, Parasola conopilus, Psathyrella conopilus

After misidentifying my fungi last week, I’m going to take a huge chance and say that I’m fairly confident these are Conical brittlestems (Parasola conopilus, formerly known as Psathyrella conopilus). I completely understand if you don’t believe me!

180925 Conical brittlestem (2)

Rosy russulas

21 Friday Sep 2018

Posted by sconzani in autumn, fungi, nature

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#FungiFriday, British fungi, fungus, Red russula, Russula

It’s Fungi Friday and today I have for your pleasure and delight one of the Russula species of fungi. According to the First Nature website of fungi expert Pat O’Reilly, around 160 species of Russula can be found in Britain, and I know from venturing out on past forays with the Glamorgan Fungus Group that the reddish-coloured ones can be especially difficult to identify so I’m not even going to try to put a name to these particular fungi. I just think they’re rather lovely and I hope they brighten your day as much as they did mine.

180921 Russula fungi (5) 180921 Russula fungi (6)

Little brown jobs

27 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by sconzani in fungi, nature

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British fungi, brownish fungi, difficult to identify fungi, fungi, fungus, little brown job

Though I have since learnt that this expression is also used by birders, ‘Little brown job’ is a term I first heard used in relation to fungi, the many and varied, brownish-hued conglomerations of fungi that have few distinguishing characteristics (unless you’re a whizz with a microscope) and so can often be notoriously difficult to identify. Here are some I’ve seen this week.

180127 Little brown jobs (1) 180127 Little brown jobs (2) 180127 Little brown jobs (3) 180127 Little brown jobs (4) 180127 Little brown jobs (5) 180127 Little brown jobs (6)

Collared earthstars

24 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by sconzani in autumn, fungi, nature

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British fungi, Cathays Cemetery, collared earthstar, earthstar, fungus, Geastrum triplex

You can’t have a blog named Earthstar without including, every now and then, a few photos of the Earthstar fungi for which it was named. I was pleased to see this little colony of Collared earthstars (Geastrum triplex) in Cardiff’s Cathays Cemetery is still thriving.

More Bird’s-nests with eggs!

11 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by sconzani in fungi, nature

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Bird's nest fungi, British fungi, Cyathus striatus, Fluted Bird's-nest fungi, fungi

How lucky am I? In the short space of just two weeks, I’ve been privileged to see two different types of Bird’s-nest fungi (the post about the Common Bird’s-nests is here), both with eggs in their nests. This second lot are Fluted Bird’s-nest fungi (Cyathus striatus; Cyathus from the Greek kyath, meaning cup-shaped, and striatus to indicate the striated or ribbed sides).

170911 Cyathus striatus Fluted Bird's Nest (1)

Fungi expert Pat O’Reilly (on his First Nature website) likens the reproduction of these fungi to a game of Tiddlywinks: I wrote about their ‘eggs’ in my previous post but Pat’s description is much the better read, of course.

170911 Cyathus striatus Fluted Bird's Nest (5)

170911 Cyathus striatus Fluted Bird's Nest (6)

170911 Cyathus striatus Fluted Bird's Nest (7)

Although these fungi are probably common, both their preferred habitat (of rotting logs in shady woodlands) and their excellent camouflage make them difficult to spot so they are rarely seen. As you can probably imagine, I was very excited when told their location by a friend and then to see them for myself. Many photographs were taken!

170911 Cyathus striatus Fluted Bird's Nest (3)

170911 Cyathus striatus Fluted Bird's Nest (4)

170911 Cyathus striatus Fluted Bird's Nest (2)

Bird’s-nests with eggs!

31 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by sconzani in fungi, nature

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bird's nest fungus, British fungi, Common bird's-nest fungus, Crucibulum laeve, fungus, peridiole

How cool are these?

170831 Common bird's-nest fungus (1)

Of course, you’ve guessed it – I’m not talking about eggs in the nests of birds with feathers: these are fungi, but one of the most amazing types of fungi I know. And this was the first time I’d seen them with eggs in the nests and, indeed, it was the first time I’d seen them before the eggs were exposed. And there must have been hundreds of them, all growing along the planks of wood around a raised garden bed.

170831 Common bird's-nest fungus (3)

This is the Common bird’s-nest fungus (Crucibulum laeve) and I think you can see where it got its common name. It starts off looking like small blobs of yellowy orange fur, then the furry membrane falls off to reveal its inner cupcake-shaped fruiting body and that’s where the eggs sit. Of course, they’re not eggs at all: the scientific name for them is peridioles. They’re effectively capsules full of spores that are activated when rain drops hit them, causing them to ‘leave the nest’ and begin the germination process. (If you’re as fascinated by these as I am, you can read more here.)

170831 Common bird's-nest fungus (5)

Scarlet elfcups

03 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by sconzani in fungi, nature

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British fungi, Elfcups, fungus, Ruby elfcup, Sarcoscypha austriaca, Sarcoscypha coccinea, Scarlet elfcup

It’s elfcup fruiting time! There’s a spot in one of my local woodlands where these vibrant Scarlet elfcups (Sarcoscypha austriaca) grow in profusion so I made sure to head that way on yesterday’s wander, and I was not disappointed. In their hundreds, these little beauties are pushing up through the dense moss that covers the rotting branches and logs on the forest floor.

170103-scarlet-elfcup-1

I blogged about these gorgeous fungi last year and noted then that there are two species of red elfcups, the Scarlet (Sarcoscypha austriaca) and the Ruby (Sarcoscypha coccinea). They can only be differentiated, one from the other, through microscopic examination, but I know that the elfcups in my favoured spot are the Scarlet variety as a friend very kindly checked them for me. My mission now is to find the Ruby.