A wildlife diary
Mary Smith 33 Gaynes Park Road, Upminster, Essex RM14 2HJ
What a wonderful instrument a microscope is! And what a lot of activity goes on down
there! I have seen fungal spores germinating in the drop of water on the slide, over a
space of an hour or two. And even ones that do not move or change in front of your eyes
are often very beautiful, like pollen grains and ornamented fungal spores, or the geometric
arrangements of cells in a moss leaf. A couple of weeks ago I took home a fragment of
rotten wood on which a slime mould was growing, only about 1 or 2mm high. After a
couple of weeks in a cool damp place it looked mature, ie there were no further changes
for about three days. Looking at a sample through the microscope, the elaters (somewhat
like little coiled springs) were uncoiling and pushing spores out as I watched. It went on
for some time, with an increasing area of shed spores around the original piece. What
wonderful movement, and 1 had never seen it before. It turned out to be Trichia varia,
which is very common on old rotten wood.
Even though this last autumn has been the most useless fungus season ever, the Magpie
Coprinus picaceus produced its best show in Belhus Woods Country Park on the first
day of December (Plate 1). Over the past few years we have seen one or two only, early
in October. This year there were 6 at once, but nearly two months late. They were
scattered over an area of some 100 square metres, indicating an extensive patch of
mycelium underground. Because of the large mycelium, it is thought that fungi probably
have the largest total volume and mass of any living organism, and may well also carry
the record for the longest lived. Some fungi make their growth underground in a ring
pattern, like the 'fairy rings' on a lawn. Each ring grows on the outer edge, into new
territory, and dies off in the inner area as the fungi have used up the nutrients (the grass
often suffers too!). Year by year the ring grows, usually only a few centimetres each
year. Some fairy rings have been found which are several kilometres across, so, knowing
roughly how fast each species grows, the ages can be worked out. Some in USA, where
this work has been done, are estimated to be several thousand years old! By the time
you have one as big as that, the total volume and mass of the whole mycelium ring can
be estimated, and some have been found to have a greater volume and mass than the
giant Redwoods.
Saturday 6 December was the Annual Exhibition and Social Meeting. If you were there,
you will know how good it was, and if you were not, then you really did miss out! Anew
selection of nearly twenty exhibits gave a very interesting display, including fresh fungi
from Hatfield forest, fresh green ferns, pebbles left by the retreating ice in Essex but
with origins far away, walking sticks and other carved wood items using coppice poles,
managing and enlarging a nature reserve at Stow Maries, three stuffed birds from our
Collections, some preserved plants of the Shoebury area from the herbarium at Southend
Museum, newts, birds, wood pastures, gasteromycetes, natural history around Southend
4 Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 44, May 2004