Mystery Webs

 

You may find substantial, dense webs on fungi in autumn. These look quite like the tent-webs of some moth and sawfly larvae, but differ in occurring later in the year; enclosing a fungus instead of a food-plant; not being full of specks of caterpillar dung; you also rarely see any living (or dead) creatures, eggs or pupae in them.

The cleanness of the webs and the way they are restricted to a particular fungus might make you think you are looking at a grey, fuzzy mould.

To find out what was making these, I took a piece home and kept it in a vivarium. Checking on the vivarium in the middle of the night I spotted a small mealworm-like creature moving through the web, leaving a slime trail behind it. I caught it and put it in an empty enclosure where it soon started fervently weaving by bobbing its head back and forth at an impressive rate, extruding silk from spinnerets on its snout. In the morning, the new enclosure was full of webs, and the larva resting in the middle.

I believe these larvae are fungus gnats of the family Mycetophilidae - a large family of small, rather plain flies with thousands of described species, most of which lay their eggs on fungi. I haven't found much witten about the function of the webs: maintaining a humid atmosphere; excluding other small creatures; catching spores for consumption have all been mooted. The larvae also seem to be able to move smoothly and rapidly through their silk network.

Rutstroemia firma

 

Rutstroemia firma is a brown cup fungus that grows on dead oak wood. It often has a long, dark stem, but can also come up in crowded rosettes.

Alder Tongue

 

These strange growths on alder cones are cause by a fungus - Taphrina alni - but they are actually galls. Like the structures produced by gall-wasps, the natural growth of the plant is distorted by the fungus to produce distinctive structures for its benefit.

Taphrina alni - alder tongue

Taphrina alni - alder tongue

Taphrina alni - alder tongue

Taphrina alni - alder tongue

Scaly Hedgehog Mushroom

 

 

 

This is a scaly hedgehog mushroom - Sarcodon squamosus. British distribution is mostly restricted to the Caledonian pine forests. I found this one by Loch Garten. It can be used to produce some nice blue-green shades of fabric dye.

Little Orange Mushroom

 Fencepost of the Week #185

Deconica coprophila

Deconica coprophila

Horn of Plenty

Craterellus conucopioides - Horn of Plenty

Craterellus conucopioides - Horn of Plenty

Craterellus conucopioides - Horn of Plenty

Craterellus conucopioides - Horn of Plenty

Leccinum pseudoscabrum

Leccinum pseudoscabrum

Leccinum pseudoscabrum

Leccinum pseudoscabrum - a brown bolette which grows in association with hazel and hornbeam trees.

Amanita virosa

Amanita virosa

 A very poisonous, pure white mushroom seen here in woods on the isle of Ulva, Scotland.

Amanita virosa

More Blobs

Every so often I find a strange blob of something growing in the woods. Trying to identify what they are is often challenging - it's hard to tell if they are fungi or slime moulds or something else entirely (eg. star slime from gutted toads.)

 But this week, with the aid of a slightly more comprehensive field guide, I resolved two of my longest standing mystery blobs:

Tremella steidleri

Blob 1 was an impressive gelatinous lump I found growing on the side of a mossy oak in 2007. Revisiting the site last week, I found a smaller but similar blob. It was right next to some Stereum hirsutum brackets, and looking through Tremella again I found this species which has a distinctive, knotty form, and a distinctive, frosty bloom. The way the ageing fruiting body disintegrates into slime might also be distinctive enough to aid in identifying similar blobs.

Postia ptychogaster - old, weathered specimen

Postia ptychogaster - fresh specimen

Blobs 2 & 3: One from 2010 and one from 2016, I couldn't figure these out until I was looking up a very ordinary bracket fungus from the genus Postia  and saw an illustration of Postia ptychogaster on the same page.

Jelly Tongue Fungus

Psuedohydnum gelatinosum - Jelly Tongue Fungus

Crested Coral Fungus

Clavulina coralloides - Crested Coral Fungus

An unusually neat, near circular patch of crested coral fungus.

Clavulina coralloides - Crested Coral Fungus

Laccria bicolor

This is Laccaria bicolor - one of the deceivers. Its distinguishing characteristic is the purple down covering the lower part of its stipe.

It grows on nutrient poor, acidic soils and has recently been observed killing and digesting insects (springtails in particular.)  It absorbs nitrogen from the springtails and trades it for carbon with neighbouring trees via ecto-mycorrhizal connections.

Here is a clear (if slightly sensationalist) description of the discovery.

Lactarius chrysorrheus

Lactarius chrysorrheus

Lactarius chrysorrheus is a milkcap that grows under oaks and exudes yellow milk.

Pluteus Salicinus

Pluteus salicinus

Pluteus salicinus - rather like a deer mushroom - P. cervinus - but smaller, paler, greyer and with a tufty, felt-like texture near the center of the cap. Grows in damp places.

False Chanterelle

False chanterelle - Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca

False chanterelle - Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca

Blushers

Amanita rubescens - the blusher

Oyster Mushrooms

Oyster mushrooms - Pleurotus ostreatus - available all year round, in forests as well as supermarkets.

Macrolepiota clelandii

Macrolepiota clelandii

A very tall, thin parasol mushroom, native to Australia and New Zealand.

Marasmius wynnei

Marasmius wynnei

Fairly common, trooping in dense tufts under beech trees.