Lyophyllum decastes Dunfermline

Finding myself without a car for a couple of days I was reduced to wandering the streets of Dunfermline bothering the fungi of hedgerows and verges, hoping that I might be able to transport any finds to Edinburgh when my car was returned to me.

I found that Clitocybe fragrans was relatively abundant, there were a couple of nice Shaggy Inkcaps, and from the change in scenery I also bumped into a couple of new species for me, Inocybe geophyllum and Lyophyllum decastes. Such was the last-minuteness of this collection that I had no time to identify them or even to photograph the Inocybe (at least beyond genus) before our regular chesser meeting where they were identified by RW.

The Inocybe was a nice neat little thing, very pale/white throughout and with no bulbous base. The Lyophyllum, a new genus for me, looked like this:

Fasciculate, and trooping

 

Gill with decurrent tooth

I also came across Lactarius pubescens in the company of a beech which had been planted to liven up the edges of a new housing development

Galerina calyptrata

From Mossmorran, examined at Chesser August meeting, came these splendid calyptrate spores. No pics of the whole fruit body though maybe they are still available to photograph

Chesser 04/06/2015

A mixed bag at this time of year with first up an collybioid agaric from Cullaloe

Fruitbodies

 

Gills

Spores - typical smooth, hyaline, ellipsoid, j-

Pileipellis - somewhat dry (see later!)

Stipe

Rehydrated "dryophila type" pileipellis cell!

This species is one which was recorded from last May on the reserve so looks like a recurring species. Maybe I'll even recognise it at the third time of asking. Not sure of the order, but somewhere in the mix was this splendid asco - Scutellinia scutellata

Another asco which caused initial confusion was this nice fat jelly from cherry tree bark - a Cudoniella sp. (C. clavus var grandis)

From that overstuffed roundness we went to the spikiness of Scopuloides rimosa

Also brought along for our viewing pleasure was this cheeky little orange basidiomycete, something of a rarity, having a go at some Peniophora incarnata. I've clearly written its name down wrongly so I'll wait until I have that properly from Ellis & Ellis later

Last, but not least was this odontoid specimen which was still under scrutiny when I left

Not a bad night with a nice breadth of material to look at. There's an increase in asco-bothering activity but we did manage a couple of resupinates at least, and the ascos were nice.

Chesser 09/04/2015

Psathyrella spadiceogrisea

Almost immediately identified on field characters and time of year, but we persevered with keying anyway. After some investigation it seemed that we would never have identified this species that way. Noted was the cellular nature of the cuticle which narrows down your field of search greatly (though not examined or at least photographed). Also worth noting was that the key required this species to be "not radially grooved" although the species descripton calls it "striate". Hmmm. Three dimensionally striate?

Lichenomphalina ericetorum
Our next species has a checkered past with its lichen association causing some trouble. In fact to record this I had to call it Lichenomphalia umbellifera. There's an interesting blurb about it here: link. Three noteworthy features are the decurrent gills, the dark area at the base of the gills on the stipe and the algae at the base of the stipe. This one was from Mossmorran in Fife

Algae

Trametes ochracea
Another one from Cullaloe and another species for which  field characters win the day. Spore checking was done for shape and size. If you cut into the fb you can see there's no black line as there is in T.versicolor

Hyphoderma praetermissum
A species we've seen many times before. This was on decorticated wood and formed a thin waxy rosaceous layer over the wood . Sphaerocysts were not found but two types of cystidia were located and spores were ok. I didn't note where this one was from - perhaps Bawsinch.

Botryobasidium subcoronatum
An old favourite, quickly processed and identified on a brief description

Tubulicrinis subulatus
Another one seen before but not at Chesser meetings, this is a fine performer under the microscope, and the cystidia are visible under a hand lens

Chesser, 12/03/2015 - "Couldn't be Jaapia"

We started the evening with Gleocystidiellum porosum (curiously - see last post!). The gloeocystidia can be seen in the picture below:

Next up was the highlight of the evening - a tuberculate species on a saturated piece of wood (beech?) which also hosted various other things.

In broader view the spores were mostly dismissed as asco spores, until closer (and retrospective) inspection

It turned out that the navicular spores were dextrinoid, but with hyaline tips. Not readily seen from the below picture, but evident in the one above, is that these were the most abundant, with the entirely brown or hyaline spores being anomalous.

Basidia were 4-sterigmate, fairly long and skinny, as were their sterigmata.

(slide preparation SB)

The form of cystidia present can be seen here, with a loose spore at the tip

(slide preparation SB)

The final determination was Jaapia argillacea, which has very few records on NBN, as can be seen from the map below. The species readily keys out in Bernicchia (though without pictures!) and is also found in Ellis&Ellis. The voucher is making its way to the fungarium at RGBE.

Following this we re-visited Hyphoderma praetermissum - a species which we have seen a number of times now. Visible on the surface of the fruit body were a number of nematodes which had 'contributed' their resources to the fungus. Below are shots of the basidium and one type of cystidium, along with a live action shot of a doomed nitrogen donor. Also visible in the shot are the empty sausage-skin remnants of previous victims (or skin-shaped mycelium?).

Rounding off the night was Athelia epiphylla, from which I didn't obtain microphotographs