Butser Hill
Sun 24 Apr 2016
Field event ID HF1604
OS Grid areas: SU6917 SU6918
Report: When a select group of surveyors assembled in the Butser Hill car park on the 24th April it looked like being a beautiful day - for early March (!) - and so it proved. The previous weeks’ cool but dry weather had not encouraged the fungi to fruit and many of the specimens which were found were suffering from thirst. A Yew thicket close to the car park produced a number of resupinates, which encouraged us to the extent that SOMETHING was fruiting (and gave us a chance to try out Alan and Paul's Field Guide). Unfortunately, this expectation was premature, as even the resupinates were “occasional”. The best “branch of the day” was found by Paul and carried fresh specimens of both Subulicystidium longisporum (with its encrusted cystidia and distictive spores) and the hetero, Exidiopsis grisea, which was far too fresh to resemble its representations in either B&K or Lucas & Hugill and was even listed as Exidia thuretiana for a while… The only agarics of the day did not get named. One was a crushed Psathyrella or Agrocybe found by Tina (no-one owned up to being the owner of the boot) and the other was a baby on a stick which never matured. During lunch we were phoned by Ailsa and Brenda, who had arrived 45 minutes late having got lost on their trek across Hampshire and had by then failed to pick up our scent. They declined our invitation to join us at the bottom of the valley (did I say Butser Hill lives up to its name?) and carried out their own survey near the top of the hill. On the way back up the incline, Eric collected a nettle stem with some white specks. With a little moisture, these opened out into the hairy basidiomycete cup, Lachnella villosa (image attached) …and just to demonstrate how much some of us have to learn, Eric glanced at what he thought looked like a Schizopora only to find that it really had teeth and spiny spores and was actually Trechispora nivea….
Species list: Amylostereum laevigatum, Auricularia auricula-judae, Botryobasidium aureum, Daldinia concentrica, Exidiopsis grisea, Ganoderma australe, Hymenochaete corrugata, Hyphodontia crustosa, Hyphodontia nespori, Hyphodontia sambuci, Hypoxylon fragiforme, Lachnella villosa, Stereum hirsutum, Subulicystidium longisporum, Trametes versicolor, Trechispora nivea, Xylaria hypoxylon