UK Fungi

When I saw the initial post I was tempted to suggest Xanthoparmelia conspersa, but as a novice was rather reluctant to make the suggestion. The comment about using a tiny drop of reagent for the spot test is important, and I would add that the C+ red reaction can be very fugitive with the red colour...

I maintain the database for biological records for the Outer Hebrides (VC 110) for Outer Hebrides Biological Recording, a small group of amateur naturalists who collect and collate biological records for the islands on a voluntary basis. We have a policy of making all our records (apart from a few s...

Thank you for drawing our attention to this new information on Ramalina europaea and R. pollinaria s.lat. A severe shortage of trees makes it unlikely that I will find either, although there is a record of R. pollinaria dating back to 1960 from Stornoway on the island of Lewis. I will look carefully...

Thank you Janet.
It is not really urgent, I'm just trying to keep my sources up-to-date.

Christine

I am restructuring the [url=http://www.outerhebridesfungi.co.uk/]Fungi of the Outer Hebrides[url] website to incorporate new sections on lichenicolous fungi and lichens. I am aware of Hawksworth's publication The lichenicolous fungi of Great Britain and Ireland: an overview and annotated checklist p...

Thank you Neil and Jenny for the very helpful expert advice, which is greatly appreciated. You are right about ignoring immature Cladonia but as the woodland in Stornoway is the only opportunity we get to look at lichens and fungi in this type of habitat we tend to make the most of our visits and I ...

I always have trouble trying to distinguish Cladonia macilenta from polydactyla , when the podetia on polydactyla are under-developed and the apothecia on macilenta are similarly poorly developed. This is not helped by variations in the descriptions of the soredia on the podetia. Dobson describes ma...

Sorry for the delay. The geographical area of your sample is set by the grid reference, so if you have a GPS you can use either an 8 or 10 fig grid reference which will pinpoint your sample to with 10m or less. You could then group all your samples together into a survey for a particular location. S...

Most of the biological recording groups currently use Recorder 6. The learning curve may be a little steeper than Mapmate but it is very flexible and once set-up easy to input data. There is a one-off price for the software (about £30) with no annual fees for up-dates. The support via the NBN forum ...

Hello Mike, Thank you for your well considered and detailed comments. I have already tackled the problem of excessive scrolling through A-Z lists, having to scoll down acres to type to get to W can be irritating. The images are all full-size - Chris has a particular dislike of thumbnails, so I am wo...

Hello everyone, I am re-designing the Outer Hebrides Fungi website (http://www.outerhebridesfungi.co.uk/) and I would like to ask for your views on how you like sites to work. Do you prefer to scroll through images or click on a carousel? If there are a series of photographs of the macro and micro-s...

Deciding whether a species is rare or under-recorded is difficult. First you need an assessment of whether the habitat is common in a particular area e.g. in the Outer Hebrides the amount of broad-leaf woodland is strictly limited so fungi associated with this type of habitat are locally uncommon, b...