Fungus foray to Stoneymore & Deerslade Woods, Mill Green on
September 20th 2005
Graham Smith 48 The Meads, Ingatestone, Essex CM4 OAE
Nine members met in the car park opposite "The Cricketers" at Mill Green at two o'clock
and from there spread out through the adjoining woodland in search of fungi. It will not,
I hope, cause offence among those who took part if I should liken an EFC fungi foray to
a party of great apes foraging for food in the African savannah, the evolutionary benefits
of having many pairs of eyes searching for eatables (including fungi) being readily
apparent during these meetings. It is very easy for an individual forayer to miss things,
but a group, foraging at random through the trees ensures that coverage of an area is
much more complete. The downside is that you often end up with a large collection of
specimens that need work under the microscope to identify correctly. Fortunately, Mary
Smith agreed to tackle many of these while Martin Gregory identified several micro-
fungi, little work on which has been carried out in the area. These last included the
powdery mildews Erisyphe bicornis, E. ranunculi and E. heraclei, found growing on
Greater Plantain, Creeping Buttercup and Hogweed, respectively; the myxomycetes
Fuligo septica and Lycogala terrestre (both on oak) and Craterium minutum (on Common
Nettle); and an assortment of other species, sometimes grouped together as Loculu-
ascomycetes, among which were Lachnum apulum and Phyllachora juna on Soft Rush
and Dendryphion comosum and Leptosphaeria acuta, again on nettle.
Although not as warm as in 2004 there were frequent long dry spells during the summer
and autumn and the modest amount of rain that fell in August and early September
yielded only a correspondingly modest number of fungi, particularly in woodland areas,
and the group had to work hard for its successes. These included Amanita rubescens var
annulosulfurea (identified by Martin) and several species whose identification was
confirmed by Mary, namely, Inocybe fraudans, Mycena acicula, Pholiota tuberculosa,
Pleurotus dryinus, Pleurotus pulmonarius and the beautiful blue-green discoid fungi,
Chlorosplenium aeruginascens. None of these are particularly rare species but all were
new records for the Writtle Forest woodlands. I returned home with a number of finds
including a Leccinum that I assumed to be scabrum but which keyed out in Geoffrey
Kibby's key in the January 2000 issue of Field Mycology as Leccinum umbrinum.
However, this species and L. oxydabile (which 1 have also found in the area) is treated
as con-specific with Leccinum rigidipes in the new Checklist of British & Irish
Basidiomycota, a species not previously identified in the area. Such are the joys of fungi
taxonomy at the moment! The group also found several Russula. One, with a dull brick-
red cap, keyed out as R. velenovskyi in Geoffrey Kibby's new key on the group, a not
uncommon species in mixed woodland but, again, new for this site. Another species,
though, with a dark brown cap, which in the past, using Rayner, I had identified as R.
sororia proved, using Kibby, to consist of two species, sororia and amonolens both of
which were found during the foray. The latter is apparently common under oaks and has
predominantly ellipsoidal, rather than semi-globose spores, a difference clearly
Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 50, May 2006
19