In addition to the fungi we saw a good range of late butterflies - Peacock, Comma, Red
Admiral, Speckled Wood, Small and Large Whites. Even a Small Tortoiseshell - a rarity
indeed! Curry Farm is a good site for Great Green Grasshopper but we were a bit too
late for those: a Dark Bush Cricket was heard chirruping though. Lunch was taken on
Steve's Lawn, where the husk of a Giant Puffball Langermannia gigantea was blowing
around on the grass. A huge concrescent bracket fungi growing inside the hollow of a
dead Horse Chestnut proved to be Rigidiporus ulmarius. We were joined for our meal
by Steve's cat, Pythagoras by name, who jumped on my lap in a seeming show of affection;
a notion dispelled when he proceeded to bit a large chunk out of the sandwich I was
eating. Cats were ever thus! Thanks are due to Steve and Richard - and Pythagoras - for
making us so welcome.
After lunch three of us drove to Bradwell Power Station and walked their nature trail. En
route we forayed the shell beach in front of the station, a beach that is now pinioned against
the seawall by rising tide levels but whose defences save it from inundation by all but the
highest tides. As a consequence it has developed an interesting grassland and bryophyte
community which is able to support a good range of fungi. Highlights here were large
numbers of the Stalked Puffball Tulostoma brumale, which looks like a rabbit pellet on a
stick - and a tiny fungus, shaped like a half open fan, growing in moss, that keyed out in
Nordic Macromyces as Arrhenia spathulata. It is thought by some authorities to be
associated with the moss Syntrichia ruralis, a species which is very common on this beach.
There were also large numbers of Macrolepiota excoriata and a single specimen of the
short-stemmed Melanoleuca brevipes, a member of a complex group that may eventually
turn out to be one of several species. Other interesting finds during our walk included large
numbers of the gaudy Stropharia aurantiaca, an alien species which as colonised the
mulched flowerbeds of Britain in recent years and which was growing along the wood-
chipped paths in one of the pine plantations; and Inocybe cookei, a new species for me,
growing in sandy soil in the same area.. The walk was rounded off with three species of
wax cap in roadside grassland, namely, Hygrocybe conica, psitticina and virginea; also
several Field Blewits, Lepista sueva, some of which one member took home for his tea!
Report of the fungus foray at Garnetts Wood, Monday 3 November
2008
Mary Smith 33 Gaynes Park Road, Upminster, Essex RM14 2HJ
Six people met at Garnetts Wood at 10:30 on a dull and unpromising morning at Garnetts
Wood. Three were a little late because much of the A130 was heavily disguised by the
signs saying it was the B1008, which did not show on anyone's maps as continuing past
the branch-point north of Chelmsford where the A131 goes off.
Mary gave a little spiel about this very ancient woodland, a relic of the original wildwood,
with trees mostly Small-leaved Lime, on chalky boulder clay. Few finds were expected
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Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 58, January 2009