It’s been a while since I found a new rust, or any type of fungi at all, so this one came as a nice surprise when I was checking bindweed leaves for leafmines of the tiny moth Bedellia somnulentella.
At first glance you might not realise this was a rust fungus as its effects simply looked like blotches on the upper surface of the leaf.
However, if you looked on the underside of the leaf, you could see the blotches were covered with tiny pustules, the fungus’s aecia from which spores are released.
As many rust fungi are plant specific, this was a relatively easy one to identify – it’s Puccinia convolvuli. Though I haven’t noticed it before when checking bindweed leaves, I was still surprised to learn that this is a relatively rare fungus in Britain, having only been discovered here in 2009 and not having spread far since that initial discovery. You can read more on this blog by Jeremy Bartlett, a Norfolk-based naturalist who I follow on social media.
