01 Friday Nov 2024
Who knew slugs liked disco? Lemon disco, that is. The fungus, not the John Travolta – Saturday Night Fever – Bee Gees – strobing lights type of disco. This particular slug certainly did, as it had paused its slithering to taste the delicate little yellow cups.
03 Friday Nov 2023
After the last few grey, wet, windy days of Storm Ciarán, I thought we needed a little sunshine, even if it’s coming from the ground below rather than the sky above. It’s not exactly warming but it certainly made me feel more cheery after days of gloom. These are likely to be Lemon disco fungi (Bisporella citrina), though they really need examination under a microscope to be sure.
21 Friday Oct 2022
Lemon Disco (Bisporella citrina) – I used probably in the title because I can’t confirm that identification microscopically – is one of the most common discos. And, at this time of the year, when the daylight hours are shortening and the weather can be wet and grey, it’s a delight to find these bright bursts of yellow, sometimes in their thousands, during a woodland wander.
11 Friday Dec 2020
Tags
British fungi, Common grey disco, Coral spot, Frosty bonnet, fungi, Jelly ear, King Alfred's Cakes, Lemon disco, Velvet shank, woodland fungi
Today, a selection of fungi spotted during my recent walks. Although I’ve named these fungi, my identifications are not based on microscopic examination and so cannot be positively confirmed.
The fungi are, I think, Coral spot (Nectria cinnabarina), Jelly ear (Auricularia auricula-judae), King Alfred’s cakes (Daldinia concentrica), and Velvet shank (Flammulina velutipes). And under the rotting logs in the woodland: Common grey disco (Mollisia cinerea), Lemon disco (Bisporella citrina), and Frosty bonnet (Mycena tenerrima).
30 Friday Nov 2018
Tags
Bisporella citrina, British fungi, cup fungi, disco fungi, fungi on rotting wood, Lachnum virgineum, Lemon disco, Snowy disco
Discos seem appropriate for a Friday night or, rather, they would have in the 1960s and ’70s. But my discos don’t involve a multi-colour dance floor or a flashing-ball light or John Travolta-style dancing – my discos are fungi. Getting down and dirty in Cogan Wood earlier this week, selectively picking up small logs of rotting wood for inspection, I found two of these little beauties.
Snowy disco (Lachnum virgineum)
Lemon disco (Bisporella citrina)
Disclaimer: Fungi are notoriously difficult to identify and one thing I’ve learnt from dipping my toes into the mycological world is that one should always confirm one’s identification, especially of minute fungi like these, by microscopic examination. I have not done that so my IDs are not confirmed, just quite likely.
13 Friday Jan 2017
There are 22 species of fungi called disco, according to the British Mycological Society’s list of English Names for Fungi 2016, and they have some delightful names, mostly referring to what they grow on, I think: Larch, Conifer, Larch canker, Rush, Heath sedge, Mast, Juniper, Fir and, my personal favourite, Hairy Nuts Disco!
So far I’ve only found two. My excuse is that they’re tiny, only a few millimetres across, so they’re difficult to spot, and many are quite rare. This first one is probably Lemon Disco (Bisporella citrina), and is actually one of the more common discos. It’s a wood-rotter that can be found growing – often in the thousands – on decaying deciduous trees, particularly oak.
This second fungus may be Snowy disco (Lachnum virgineum) – like so many fungi, it requires microscopic examination for a definite ID, and I haven’t reached that level in my mycological evolution … yet! Snowy disco also grows on dead and decaying wood, and is said to be frequent, though I’ve only found it once in 18 months of foraying.
earthstar 
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