Phaeosphaeria herpotrichoides, Red Moss

Once I got over the idea that the piece of herbaceous stem I had in my hand was Juncus I was able to track this down to Phaeosphaeria herpotrichoides. Should help identify its cohabiting smaller pyrenomycete too.

Tucked under the surface with ostiole exposed

Spores olivey-yellow en masse in the asci

Typical Leptosphaeria (s.l.) spore bulge

Curious - a stretched ascus?

Gnomoniella rubicola, Cullaloe LNR

A nice find on dead rubus stem at Cullaloe, was this little pyrenomycete. Thomson's ascos in colour doesn't really do it justice.

"hairy" stem covered in ostioles

closer

asci seem to float freely around

curious ascus "eyes"

FGSES - Red Moss/Bavelaw, 07/08/2016

A very windy day in the Pentlands but it didn't put off a hardy dozen or so dead set on bothering all things fungal.

From underneath the beech strip at NE corner of Red moss

With a fair few birches there were a number of species with Betula associations

Easter egg? Amanita fulva

Lactarius tabidus

Russula betulina

Not so obvious - Mollisia ramealis

A nice find in the car park was this Taphrina alni - Alder tongue

Possibly the highlight of the day (though I do have another candidate) was this Snaketongue Truffleclub - Cordyceps ophioglossoides. The parastic Cordyceps reaches up into the air to spread spores from a false truffle which is underground.

Elaphomyces muricatus

Some other great highlights of the day ...

Boletus luridiformis - blueing like crazy on cutting

Cortinarius hemitrichus (?)

Clavulina cinerea

Trichophaea hemisphaerioides

Non fungal
You can't spend a day inthe field without also finding other things, so a small section devoted to them

Coxcomb prominent caterpillar

Common Hawker staying out of the wind

Pterostichus madidus

Cullaloe 31/07/2016 - Poroid and Pyro

One poroid, one pyro

Poroid

Mostly resupinate with a shelfy overhang. The upper surface looks like it's on a fungus that wasn't designed to have an upper surface. No spores were found yet despite waiting a few days to see if they would develop.

Upper surface

Overhang from below

Form of end section where not reupinate

Hymenium

Pyro
c.06mm diameter, spores c.17.5u long, brown with multiple rtansverse septa and some longitudinal. Possibly Cucurbitaria rubefaciens, a Salix specialist in E&E.  

Small scattering of perithecia - no stroma

Ascus tip - no I+ signs anywhere (unless spores initially hyaline ... dammit)

Hymenoscyphus vitellinus at Cullaloe, 31/07/2016

Found on the rotting herbaceous stems beside a small channel at the north of the reserve

Spore in KOH

A non-discharged ascus

Spore in Melzers

Blued ascus pores

Keying out in Dennis

"Chesser Group", 31/05/2016

No mushrooms in sight for this meeting but plenty of interesting material all the same.

First up the flowery spores of a smut Urocystis eranthidis on the back of an Eranthis flower

Next is the hyphomycete . These hyaline-ended spores are blastospores, which are produced by budding off the end of the conidiophore (conidio-spore producing structure).If only I could remember which species and from which substrate ...

Another hyphomycete, this time with spores which break off from the tip of the conidiophore. From a blackened carrot - Thielaviopsis basicola

 A pathogen of fern this time, with these spores coming from Milesina murariae  on Asplenium ruta-muraria (Wall Rue)

Next up was a coelomycete on Typha (bulrush) which produces its spores out of acervuli (Latin derivation "little heap"), which are saucer shaped receptacles where the conidiopheres grow. A coelomycete is like a hyphomycete but it has a fruit body of sorts ("ceolum" is from the Greek work "cavity"). The cavity could be an acervulus or it could be a pycnidium.

Technically I suppose these cavities aren't really receptacles - transmitacles?

A large and profusely sporulating Peziza went under the knife next and after some deliberation proved to be Peziza micropus, with a little foot/stipe as the name suggests, though this was only obvious on the smaller of the two fruit bodies. The larger fruit body demonstrated the size that a sporocarp can reach when on wood chips - fungus steroids.

Paraphyses shot with ornamented spore contamination!

little stipe

Episphaeria fraxinicola, Lochgelly 31st March 2016

This little faker makes you think it's a discomycete and then ... boom! A basidium heaves into view!

It's a lover of ash as the name implies, and that's where this was found too