Notes & Records

Vol 14 (1)

Notes & Records Alick Henrici* hat basidiomycete would cause most excitement if found growing wild in Britain? Surely Amanita caesarea. Not seen yet... but with climate change who knows? It’s already not too far away in France. Here I want to restrict the question, as I did once before, to the most exciting species on the British ‘Extinct’ list (defined as ‘unknown in the last 50 years‘). Candidates should be very distinctive, undoubtedly British in the past and preferably unseen for around a century. Top of the poll was undoubtedly Myriostoma coliforme until refound in 2006 after 125 years. As next in line I proposed Artomyces pyxidatus, found last year after 116 years (see this issue p.32). The position is once again open, so here is the popular favourite candidate and two more of my own. Further proposals welcomed. For instance, Martyn Ainsworth suggests Pycnoporus cinnabarinus, last seen in Perthshire in 1913 so this will be its centenary year.

able - see Fig. 1 or the front cover of Breitenbach & Kränzlin, Fungi of Switzerland Vol.2. But on at least one occasion violet-tinged chanterelles have been misreported as Gomphus, and thus as usual all unvouchered records come trailing clouds of uncertainty. It is mycorrhizal and best known from moderately calcareous montane conifer forests. This is its typical habitat in Switzerland and Scandinavia, and it came as a surprise to me to find that in Britain it is (or was) known only from three southern English beechwoods. I am grateful to Martyn Ainsworth for directing me to Dahlberg & Croneborg (2006), a booklet giving Europe-wide information on 33 threatened fungi proposed for inclusion in Appendix 1 to the Bern Convention. This is one of them, being on the Red Lists of 17 of the 25 European countries where it is known. Unfortunately the proposal got mired in bureaucracy and no fungi got listed at all. Only this admirable booklet remains. It lists calcareous beechwoods as also the principal habitat for G. clavatus in eg. France and Germany. This species seems to have been long known in Britain.Withering (1796) listed Clavaria elveloides, now considered a synonym. Gray

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Gomphus clavatus Several people have suggested this species, though a new record this year would only close an 86-year gap. In good condition it is unmistake-

Fig. 1. Gomphus clavatus photographed in Germany. Photograph © Marco, Pilzfotograf, Wikimedia. **8 Victoria Cottages, Sandycombe Rd., Richmond, Surrey TW9 3NW

doi:10.1016/j.fldmyc.2012.12.010

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Vol 14 (1) (1821), in his Natural Arrangement of British Plants, actually made the combination in Gomphus of Persoon’s Merulius clavatus. But the only British collections known to survive, all held at Kew, are: from Bisham, Berkshire, undated but ex herb. Berkeley, so pre-1879; from Tetsworth, Oxfordshire 02.11.1891 ex herb. William Phillips; from Cranham woods, Gloucestershire det. Carleton Rea 23.08.1927. The first two were recorded as Craterellus clavatus and the third as Neurophyllum clavatum. The mention in CBIB of further British 20th century collections is mistaken. A plausible Rea painting at Kew from Epping Forest in 1924 is accompanied by implausible spore measurements. The corresponding material hasn’t survived, but a collection in Kew from the same site six weeks later is undoubtedly a Cantharellus, most probably C. amethysteus given the colour; its spores are broadly ellipsoid and smooth. I examined the other three collections listed above while preparing these notes and in each case found abundant typical narrow tuberculate Gomphus spores (similar to those of its Ramaria relatives). There are two further unvouchered records on FRDBI: Republic of Ireland (Co. Offally, undated but prior to 1910) and Scotland (S.Aberdeen, 2001, with Betula). Cooke never found a collection to illustrate (or even a painting to copy) for his 8-volume magnum opus. Nor is there any reference to this species in Bisby’s 1952 index to the first 50 years of the Transactions of the British Mycological Society (1899 – 1949). Could it nevertheless still lurk unseen among the beech leaves somewhere in southern England?

F.A.N. Vol.2 and Kovalenko (2012) in Funga Nordica 2nd Edition. H. russula (Figs 2 & 3) is large, 10–15(–20) cm cap diameter, with unchanging flesh and mycorrhizal only with hardwoods. H. erubescens is a smaller usually paler and more slender species, bruising yellow, especially in the stipe base, and mycorrhizal only with conifers. There is also a spore difference: H. russu1a typically 7–8 x 4–5 µm, H. erubescens 8–10 x 4–5 µm. Kew holds British material under either name from only two sites: • Two collections from Berkeley’s parish of King’s Cliffe, Northants, filed as H. erubescens. One from 1857 is from Collyweston Wood and labelled “Ag. carnosus Lorentz (A. acerbus in Outlines of B.F.)”. The other has no date but reached Kew in 1867 via Hooker’s herbarium. • Three collections made by members of the Woolhope Club on forays to Downton Park, Herefordshire in the period 1877–1880 where both names were used. I am grateful to Jo Weightman for supplying me with two relevant extracts from the Woolhope Club Transactions. In 1877: “Agaricus Russula was so named by Schaeffer, but there is another (book) plant named by the illustrious Fries Hygrophorus erubescens; the description of both tally as well as natural objects (especially fungi) will tally with descriptions, and the two plants are undoubtedly the same. Those who know the Agaricus have never seen the Hygrophorus, and those who find the Hygrophorus (Says M. Cornu) never meet with the Agaricus.” M. Le Cornu was a French visitor to the club. In 1878 we get: “Mr Howes told us that the plant was not Agaricus Russula but Hygrophorus erubescens, and that it was “settled” last year in France. It is always pleasant to hear of a fungological matter being “settled”, but it is sometimes well to know who has “settled” it.” There are also two paintings in support of the collections from Downton. One was by Dr Bull, the man who introduced the very word ‘foray’, see Weightman (2009) where this painting is reproduced. It was inscribed H. russula, but crossed out and H. erubescens substituted. The other is the H. erubescens of Cooke 876(888) from his Vol.6 of 1888, inscribed “in fir woods near Hereford”, but presumably also from Downton. Both clearly show yellow staining of the flesh. It would seem that everything discussed so far was

Hygrophorus erubescens and H. russula These are two similar large and fairly spectacular pink-blotched species, here considered together as they were much confused in the past. The evidence suggests they were last recorded in 1880 and 1903 respectively. The genus Hygrophorus as a whole appears to have declined strongly in NW Europe over the last 50 years, so I am not really expecting either to turn up again soon. But it will certainly cause a stir if one of them does. Their epithets simply mean ‘reddening’ and ‘reddish’, there is no real resemblance to any species of Russula. The chief differences between the two species are consistently described by Arnolds (1990) in

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Vol 14 (1) • Amy Rea painted H. russula for her husband Carleton Rea from Crew’s Hill Wood, Worcester on 17.09.1903. No host tree is indicated, but spores 6 x 4–5 µm are drawn, on the low side for H. russula but very wrong for H. erubescens. The Rea illustration set already included a convincing typical pale slender H. erubescens, painted in France in 1897. His book (Rea, 1922) has the two species well distinguished.

Fig. 2. Hygrophorus russula showing the vinaceouspink staining but without the yellow discoloration of H. erubescens. New York State, USA. Photograph © Geoffrey Kibby.

indeed H. erubescens and not H. russula. Downton Park is large and varied. Jo Weightman has forayed there on a number of occasions, but with no hint of a pink Hygrophorus to be seen. Though beech is present, the suggestion in CBIB of H. erubescens associated with beech appears unfounded. The evidence for H. russula in Britain is slim but difficult to ignore. It is limited solely to two paintings, and no corresponding material survives for either of them: • Cooke 1116(926) from his Vol. 8 of 1889 as Agaricus (Tricholoma) russula (Fig. 3). This is inscribed “amongst grass. Pleasure Grounds, Kew, Oct. 1886”, indicating a location somewhere within the northern end of Kew Gardens, where today it would come as a major surprise. The fungi shown are very stout and opulent and bright pink. They appear slightly exagerated for H. russula and quite unlike H. erubescens which he had already convincingly illustrated. He includes spore drawings said to be 10 x 5 µm, over-large for H. russula and fine for H. erubescens. But this wouldn’t be the only instance of a Cooke painting adorned with spores that clearly don’t fit the material illustrated.

Fig. 3. Hygrophorus russula illustrated by Cooke, as collected in Kew Gardens in 1886. Photograph courtesy of the British Mycological Society.

Aleurodiscus wakefieldiae Finding any of the species discussed above is pretty unlikely. By contrast I note here (Fig.4) another spectacular species for which there was a mere 58 year gap between its first and second British finds. The surprise in this case is that it took so long. Yes, it's ‘only’ a corticioid, but it's bright pink and often in some quantity when found. It grows on thickish dead attached twigs, usually of Fagus, sometimes Quercus. Under the microscope it is equally spectacular; like all Aleurodiscus species it has huge amyloid spores, in this case around 20 x 15 µm and finely ornamented. It was first found by Elsie

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Vol 14 (1) Wakefield at Berry Pomeroy in South Devon in 1935. From 1993 onwards it has appeared in at least eight other widely separated areas, chiefly on BMS forays, most recently the Isle of Bute, where it was found in several places last year. Miss Wakefield identified her collection as A. oakesii (Wakefield, 1952), a rather similar American species, though in fact it was new to science at the time. It was next found in France, where comparisons were made between the French, British and American material and it was recognised as distinct and named in her honour (Boidin & Beller, 1967). There have now been sufficient collections to establish that it has a largely Atlantic distribution. It has a stronghold in the New Forest, but is otherwise known in Devon, Cornwall, Merioneth, Caernarvon, the Isle of Man, Kirkudbright, Bute and Perthshire, and outside Britain so far only in France and Spain.

coloured discomycete occuring in autumn blackening the petioles of fallen Ash leaves, very similar to the common H .albidus on the same host. It's the Chalara state that does the damage. Two Follow-ups Further to my notes in the last issue, Malcolm Storey tells me he found Ophiocordyceps clavulata on a scale insect at Westonbirt in the 1990’s and sent the material to the insect fungal specialist Alex Weir in the USA. I had it unknown in Britain since Broome collected it in 1860. Malcolm made little fuss about it at the time, considering it not surprising that obscure fungi on obscure hosts should be rarely recorded. In the same notes I commented on a project to sequence no less than 1000 complete fungal genomes. As this goes to press, that has been trumped by news of a proposal to sequence 100,000 British human genomes mainly of cancer sufferers. There always seems to be a lot more cash available for studying humans than the rest of the world’s biodiversity!

References Arnolds, E. (1990). Hygrophorus. In Flora Agaricina

Fig.4. Aleurodiscus wakefieldiae, found by Martin Gregory on the Marquess of Bute's estate at Mountstuart, Bute, 12 Sept. 2012. Photo © Pat O’Reilly.

Neerlandica Vol.2. A.A.Balkema. Boidin, J. & Beller, J. (1967). Aleurodiscus wakefieldiae nov. sp. (Basidiomycetes). Bull. Soc. Myc. France. 82: 561-568. Cooke, M.C. (1881-1891). Illustrations of British Fungi. 8 Vols. Williams & Noorgate.

Ash Dieback and Kew The Kew authorities are taking a philosphical attitude. Ash dieback will probably get there one day, and when it does it will be treated as a significant research opportunity. Infected trees certainly won't be immediately uprooted and burnt. There are 227 Ash trees at Kew covering 43 species. So far dieback is only known to affect our native Fraxinus excelsior and the related F. angustifolia. It will be of considerable interest to discover which species prove to be resistant. Note that in the current era of ‘one name, one fungus’ the causal organism should be known by its teleomorph name Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus rather than by the now all too familiar name of its hyphomycetous anamorph Chalara fraxinea. H. pseudoalbidus is a small cream-

Dahlberg, A. & Croneberg, H. (2006). The 33 threatened fungi in Europe. Natural environment No. 136. Council of Europe Publishing. Gray, S.F. (1821). A natural arrangement of British plants. Baldwin, Cradock & Joy, London. Kovalenko, A. (2012). Hygrophorus. In Funga Nordica, 2nd Edn. Nordsvamp. Rea, C. (1922). British Basidiomycetae. Cambridge Univ. Press. Wakefield, E.M. (1952). New or rare British Hymenomycetes (Aphyllophorales). Trans. Brit. Mycol. Soc. 35: 34-65. Weightman, J. (2009). Dr Bull’s paintings of fungi. Field Mycol. 10(4): 113-121. Withering, W. (1796). An arrangement of British plants. 3rd Edn. Birmingham: M. Swinney.

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