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mainly larger agarics and boletes. This will remain so until
new specialists arise willing and able to look at other groups
in detail. The most worrying feature of mycology today in our
Club and others is the lack of new dedicated mycologists. It
is the young mycologists that we urgently need with new
interests and new outlooks, who will be the experts of tomorrow.
Looking at the existing lists of several urgent requirements
become obvious, firstly the rediscovery of the habitat of many
rare species listed in old records. What for instance has
happened to Battarrea phalloides, a species listed by Pearson
in 1938 but of which no background information exists; or
Queletia mirabilis or Tulostoma brumale? All three are extremely
rare species. Were they ever really present in the Forest? I
personally doubt it; surely such spectacular finds would have
been written up in the literature of the day. Other vanishing
species are more easily explained. Boletus satanus has not
been seen for over 50 years, but as this is a warmth loving
species with a liking for calcareous soils, only occasionally
found even in warm southern counties, I am not surprised that
it is not found. Probably the original collection represented
a very isolated fruiting, perhaps, following a succession of
warm years; however, searches could be made in the Lower
Forest where it was recorded in the hopes that it still
survives.
Less easily explained are the mass "disappearances" of
whole genera, in particular Cortinarius. Why are these species,
particularly the larger ones in the sub-genera Phlegmacium and
Myxacium so rarely seen now? There are 58 species on our list,
many of them large and beautiful species. The Forest is an
ideal site for them but they are rarely found. They appeared
regularly on older lists but despite searches throughout the
Forest they remain elusive. Perhaps they are indeed very
particular about the sequence of seasonal changes as many
mycologists believe, and when conditions are right they will
again fruit abundantly. I would agree with this if the time
span involved were not so long. Although I have personally
recorded 2 fruitings of a bolete with a seven year gap almost
to the day and on exactly the same spot, Cortinarius seem to
have gone underground for much longer. I sometimes wonder if
their absence reflects polution in much the same way as
lichen - themselves half fungi - but I have seen no studies
to confirm this.
As a scientific record of the flora of an ancient wood-