UK Fungi

Early October is good for me. It would be great if you would consider the likes of Cladonia rangiformis and even the rather exuberant and branched ochrochlora that you suggested from my Dean collections close enough to the Cladinas to be Reindeer lookalikes. See pics. Excuse handwriting - that was a...

Yes, I'd love to improve my Cladonia skills with you Neil. Thanks. Count me in.
Juliet

Great! But where to start? Right now I'd like to revise all those nasty little Caloplacas (OK, beautiful, but I find them really hard to tell apart, especially when snailed or otherwise smudged.) Tomorrow it will be Cladonias or Rinodinas, or, or, or. Even "easy" things need looking at again occasio...

Coincidentally, I have been puzzling over an Alyxoria from a friable limestone headstone. I got as far as couplet 27 in the Opegrapha key in the 2009 Flora but there I faltered, unable to decide between mougeotii and saxicolous varia. habitus_20200719_103921_7190042X.jpg I was particularly confused ...

I haven't got a specimen of Physconia perisidiosa to try K then UV with, but I've dug out the original specimen with P enteroxantha and P grisea growing side by side, and the K+ yellow of the P enteroxantha does a very striking orange-yellow under UV, just as you said Nigel. Thanks for the tip. Here...

Is this OK for Aspicilia contorta hoffmanniana? I've been going round in circles with it - pretty sure it was an Aspicilia because of the large simple globose spores, but put off by the size of the apothecia (some greater than 1mm diam) which are sessile going urceolate when well developed. I know t...

Here is Melanohalea exasperata from the top rail of a timber guard round an orchard tree planted some 15-20 years ago. 1_Melanohaleaexasperata_20200611_190256_6110012L.jpg 1_Melanohaleaexasperata_20200611_185509_6110010J.jpg c- medulla. Surface covered in volcano pimples with a pale crater. Woohoo -...

It is good to see you have some of my constant companions - the likes of Physcia tenella and Physcia adscendens - in the report, beneath eagle perches. I must keep an eye out for that habitat in Gloucestershire. I did actually have a Bald Eagle in my garden once, escaped from a sanctuary.

It is always tricky when lichens are wet. I've just taken these photos of a good Lecanora campestris specimen dry and wet because yours looked a bit too lobate to me, and I couldn't see any fruit to reassure me you were in the right area. As you will see, mine is much lumpier (warted) than yours, la...

I wasn't sure whether to post this at all, but given Mark Powell's comment elsewhere on this site that Xanthoria polycarpa is a species "gone out of fashion" and several discussions I've had recently with people that either never see it or have trouble differentiating it from parietina, this seems t...

I came across an Ash in the Cotswolds, Vc33 East Gloucestershire, with Physconia enteroxantha and Physconia grisea side by side. It makes an interesting study, particularly when working the keys. mm-scale_20200317_085825_3170036.jpg Using the Key in the Flora 2009, p704, both are sorediate, so that ...

OK thanks, everyone. At least I know what a cephalothecioid plate is now in theory, but, as you said Paul, if I can see them at all, they are much less well defined in my specimen than the scanning electron microscope photo you attached. A good hard squash of the perithecia can yield a sort of latti...