UK Fungi

To get a thallus section, particularly of jellies like Leptogium and Collema, I cut off a small individual strap of thallus, put it near the end of a glass slide, put another slide on top, about three-quarters covering the first slide, with the specimen mostly sandwiched between the two, but stickin...

Thanks Mark I've misinterpreted paraphyses as "trails" before, so I tried really hard this time to satisfy myself that there were none. Part of the difficulty is getting a section not only because of the small size of the fruit, but because the substrate is barely consolidated sand so they don't sli...

I’m having problems with a pyrenocarp found on a low sand cliff beside a Cotswold footpath. The perithecia are more or less prominent. Ascospores overwhelmingly 1-septate, average size 28x10 microns. (Two asci found with 3-septate spores in roughly 30 perithecia squashed.) The key in the LGBI2 goes ...

Tremella phaeographidis, growing on Phaeographis smithii on a twig on a young oak tree in scrub woodland. There were several infected thalli, and in the first place I didn't see the Phaeographis stars, but wondered what on earth the pretty little pink jelly mounds on a silvery background were. Phaeo...

I found what I believe to be Rinodina pityrea on bark on a mature elder trunk on a sunny Cotswold slope. It would be a first for Vc33 East Gloucestershire, though I suspect it is common enough. I was alerted by the presence of Caloplaca phlogina, a regular in its community, and noted the slatey-grey...

Back to basics. I've been looking at twigs from a hybrid poplar tree in lowland Gloucestershire. A very early coloniser is a Lecanora with a bright white fimbriate prothallus. Apart from that it conforms to my understanding of chlarotera/hybocarpa with appropriate chemistry and crystal distribution ...

Happy Christmas Neil, and everyone.

Juliet

I've spent the morning looking at Verrucaria calciseda (Bagliettoa calciseda) from a broken limestone ridge tile from my house. (Ouch, expensive, roof repairs.) I thought I'd share some photos. There's a minor query about the interpretation of pigmentation of the pit once a perithecium has been remo...

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 ...