News

Fungal Foray

16 October 2011

Our annual outing this year took us to Chantry Wood, near Guildford, an area of mixed broadleaf and conifer woodland. A fine day and a good turnout of members ensured an enjoyable and instructional visit under the expert tutelage of Professor Maurice Moss, our intrepid resident mycologist. Owing to the dry weather the fungal finds were not as prolific as they normally are at this time of year, but we nevertheless came across a number of interesting specimens.

Certainly, the species varied somewhat from those found on our previous visits to Sheeplease over the last two years, so some new ones were discovered that we had not encountered hitherto, and thus added to the interest. Examples included the relatively rare hen-of-the-woods, Grifola frondosa, growing at the extreme base of oak and beech tree-trunks; the false deathcap, Amanita citrina, and the angel’s bonnet, Mycena arcangeliana, each said to smell of mice, raw potatoes and iodoform, respectively. Identifying odours is well known to be a subjective process, and after sampling many of us were not at all convinced as to the described aromatic similarities…

Nevertheless, some edible bay boletes, Boletus badius, with their mild mushroom smell, were identified for those willing to take some home to cook, after first ensuring that they were not infected by the bolete eater, Apiocrea chrysosperma, an ascomycete which we found growing on some specimens.

One striking find was dead wood infected with the green elfcup, Chlorocyboria aeruginascens, complete with green fruiting bodies. Oak stained green in this way was once much prized for the production of multicoloured veneers, used in the manufacture of Tunbridge ware.

Another example of wood stained by fungal activity which is much sought after by wood sculptors and furniture makers is the so-called spaulted heart wood infected with the mycelium of artist’s bracket, Ganoderma applanatum, and other fungi, and which often appear as black lines in the wood. These, commonly referred to as zone lines, are produced when competing species or strains contact each other producing melanized hyphal cells as a defence by the interacting fungi to maintain ownership of resources in the infected tree.

Maurice explained also that although the birch polypore, Piptopterus betulinum, whose fruiting body often grows high up on the tree, eventually contributes to its death and feeds saprophytically on the remains, the fungal mycelium lives as an endophyte in the tissues, sometimes for many years without causing apparent damage. Indeed, it has been suggested that the infection may benefit the tree in its early years of growth, thus indicating how fungal infection can be advantageous to forest trees in other ways than the characteristic mycorrhizal associations.

Unfortunately, space does not permit us to include more about other finds which Maurice so expertly described, but for those who are interested a complete list of species, together with those found at Sheepleese in the past two years, can be found on the KSS Branch website.

Dr Graham Godfrey FSB