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Dersingham Bog

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DersinghamBog030122-2

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Dung Beetle

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Dung Fungus Sp

Turned out to be


Cow Pat Gem (Cheilymenia granulata)

Thanks to Mark Joy for id

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Fungus Sp on Neat feather-moss (Pseudoscleropodium purum)

From Steve Judd

The small white things growing on moss happily allowed me to find plentiful spores to measure and lots of
hyphae with a complete absence of clamp connections leave me comfortable that I have Arrhenia retiruga - Small Moss Oysterling.

Small Moss Oysterling (Arrhenia retiruga)

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Fungus Sp

This one turned out to be Byssonectria terrestris

From

First Nature


Thanks to Mark Joy for id.

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Young Fungus Sp?

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Melastiza contorta

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Orange Cup Sp?

from

Steve Judd

Now to the less certain, the little orange cup jobbies: If you want to read the full process of the addled mind of a confused very amateur mycologist read on otherwise skip to the end. These little orange jobbies were a real challenge. I started with microscopy so that I knew the spore size, shape, surface and contents as well as what the paraphyses looked like before working through the Fungi of temperate Europe book looking for something similar. The paraphyses fitted nicely to the Melastiza family the spore size fitted Melastiza cornubiensis although the fruiting body didn't look right and the spores lacked reticulations, I considered M. flavorubens as that has warts on the spores rather than reticulations but no these really are smooth. Not a Melastiza so on to Octospora as the spore shape was right but far too small. Some of the Anthrocobia looked really promising in both spore shape, size and even the paraphyses looked close, the downside being thatAnthrocobia only grow on recent fire sites and there really wasn't any evidence of a recent burn. I worked through the good old faithful Peter Thompson rechecking everything that I had already lookedat and adding many more including a few absurd ideas out of desperation such as Cheilymenia vitellina which had the right sized spores but wrong habitat. Then after what felt like may hours of poring throughthe pages, out of the book leapt the perfect answer, spore size well within range, the book described perfectly the hairs on the outer surface, the fungi grow individually or in small groups on soil under deciduous trees, sandy soil, heathland, grassland and under bracken. This one has been recorded once in Norfolk identified by Tony Leach at Beeston Regis Common, I am going to have to check with Tony but in the mean time I am going to tentatively suggest Pseudaleuria fibrillosa. Of course I am very open to the likelihood that I am completely wrong and will be very interested to hear what you folks come up
with from your findings and research.




Pseudaleuria fibrillosaParaphyses01

Pseudaleuria fibrillosaSpores02

Pseudaleuria fibrillosaSpores01

Pseudaleuria fibrillosaParaphyses32

This was later confirmed by Tony

The full deliberations from Steve

I have a tentative ID that I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on.
Gill and I went to Dersingham bog to meet up with Mike and Mark for a walk. Whilst there Gill found some small, bright orange yellow 1-1.5cm cups growing singly and in small groups on the sandy soil on the higher heath type ground amongst the moss. These had a look of Melastiza without the black edge hairs although this family was probably what sprang to mind having just been looking at the M. contorta.
I took one home for further examination and below are my observations and thoughts:
I started with a close examination under the stereo microscope, internally they were very little different under the stereo than seen by the naked eye, the outer infertile surface was more interesting with apparent hairs more prolific nearer the rim, some paler and some darker but none that were actually black.
Moving to microscopy to get the spore size, shape, surface and contents as well as seeing what the paraphyses looked like.
Spores (14) 15-17 (18) x 7- 8 (9) µm smooth with an apparent thick wall evident in those showing contents, but without any obvious surface ornamentation. Having examined with water I then tried again this time using Meltzer's, again with disclosing solution and finally with Lactophenol cotton blue to be sure that they really were smooth, which they were even at x1000.
Paraphyses were long slender with a very swollen tip and a yellow contents when viewed in water. The paraphyses and asci showed no reaction to Iodine.
Confident that it wasn't anything that I recognised I then worked through the books (Fungi of temperate Europe, Fungi of Switzerland vol 1 and Peter Thompson Ascomycetes) looking for something similar.
My deliberations:
The paraphyses fitted nicely to the Melastiza family but none of them were right for various reasons. I considered Octospora as the spore shape was right but wrong size. Some of the Anthrocobia looked really promising in both spore shape, size and even the paraphyses looked close, the downside being that Anthrocobia appear to only grow on recent fire sites and there really wasn't any evidence of a recent burn. I continued through the books rechecking everything that I had already looked at and adding many more less likely ideas out of desperation such as Cheilymenia vitellina which had the right sized spores but wrong habitat.
Going again through Peter Thompson I noticed
Pseudaleuria fibrillosa which wasn't in any of the other books. Working through the description the spore size was within range, the description of paraphyses seemed right, the book described perfectly the hairs on the outer surface, the fungi growing individually or in small groups on soil under deciduous trees, sandy soil, heathland, grassland and under bracken. Looking this one up on the internet I found very little apart from an article on "The occurrence of Pseudaleuria fibrillosa in Sicily" My Italian is non existent but the photos in the document showed spores and paraphyses that were a perfect match to what I had photographed through the microscope, leaving me feeling relatively comfortable with my ID.
Of course the next thing I did was check the Norfolk Mycota to discover that it has only been recorded once in Norfolk identified by yourself at Beeston Regis Common, seeing as it was that uncommon my confidence in my ID rapidly diminished. I am very open to the likelihood that I am completely wrong and will be very interested to hear what you think. I have attached a few photographs of the fruiting body in situ and our microscopy images.
Many thanks for reading through all this.




Pseudaleria fibrillosa


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Yellowleg Bonnet (Mycena epipterygia)

This is has an extremely sticky characteristic. It's very difficult to put down once picked up.

You can see the stickiness on the stype.





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