One thousandth meeting of the E.F.C. Sept. 1956
List of EFC publications , undated
Duplicates of Index Vol. 19 & 29, Vol.12 (1887, Dene holes), 2nd supp. to Yr.Bk.,
Yr.bk. and ca. 1906-07
ESSEX NATURALISTS TRUST
Bulletins
Autumn 1969 then 2/yr. until 1981
Hainault Forest fungus foray, 6th October 2007
Mary Smith 33 Gaynes Park Road, Upminster, Essex RM14 2HJ
Seven people gathered at the Lambourne End car park (where parking is free!) at 10am
on Saturday 6* October. It was a bright day, and diy, fol lowing a day or two with some
rain about 5 days earlier. 1 am not very familiar with Hainault Forest, but since nearly
everyone else was local and knew it well, it made my job a great deal easier. Much of the
soil in this park is sandy-gravelly and was rather dry, but on the top of the hill is a clay
cap that retained the water better and we found and identified 76 taxa. This was better
than I had dared hope, but with 7 pairs of eyes, all practised at looking for things, we did
rather well.
We started out on the main track going south from the car park, and it took us almost one
hour to travel about 200m, because of the hosts of small fungi we were seeing. Some
were small Inkcaps (Coprinus), hard to identify beyond the Pleated group C plicatilis
agg., many were small Bristlestems (Psathyrella) that turned out to be equally hard to
identify, but there were thousands of them! We noted the presence of Stinkhorn Phallus
impudicus by its smell, and later on we found some 'eggs', which one of our number
took home to eat (!). Someone found some of the black jelly stuff called Witches' Butter
Exidia glandulosa, and, soon after, someone spotted an old acorn with 4 brown growths
like small golf tees of Ciboria batschiana (no English name) (see plate 2). The photo of
one growth of it was taken by Brain Ecott, to whom I am very grateful. This little fungus
is an Ascomycete, and only grows on old acorns; many of us had never seen one before.
Some small black finger-like growths on rotten wood were found to be Dead Moll's
Fingers Xylaria longipes, which was another one new to several of us.
16 Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 55, January 2008