A lichenicolous fungus Illosporiopsis (syn. Hobsonia) christiansenii

I am an amateur naturalist trying to learn something about everything living in my garden.

No, not another lichen posting! Instead, the star of today's posting - the pink blobs in photo 1 - is a fungus. Specifically a lichenicolous fungus (from the Latin colous = living amongst [lichen]).

The lichen being infested here is our old friend Physcia tenella.

Photo 2 shows the rather lumpy, 'coralloid' texture of the fungal blobs close up.

I first noticed pink blobs of this type some years ago on a country walk. I struggled to identify them for a long time but an acquaintance suggested the fungus Marchandiomyces. Searching the internet for more information led me to the very nice website of Alan Silverside. There I found pictures of two species: the rich-pink blobs of M. corallinus and the orangey-pink blobs of M. aurantiacus. I was ready to settle for one of these, but then I noticed a comment alluding to yet another pink-blob species called Illosporiopsis christianesnii. (There is yet another called Hobsonia christiansenii - but as far as I can tell this and Illosporiopsis are the same).

Distinguishing between these various blobs seemed a forlorn hope. As it said in a paper by Sikaroodi et.al. (Mycological Reserach, April 2001) I came across during my searches

"These [species] are frequently misidentified because of a paucity of morphological characters"

I was about to quit, but then I caught sight (here and in a paper by Lowen et.al. Mycologica 78(5), p.842) of a mention that the 'conidia' (= asexual spores) of I. christiansenii had a characteristic 'spiral' appearance. I took a tiny part of my fungus in a drop of water, squashed it between a slide and cover slip and viewed it with my trusty student microscope. The result is shown in photo 3 (click to enlarge).

I'm not expert enough to be confident of what I'm really looking at here. Furthermore, working at x1000 magnification is a tricky and frustrating business - there's hardly any depth of focus and the slightest knock sends things scudding out of the field of view. Nevertheless I was left pretty confident there were indeed some spiral 'objects' in my sample (the object in the photo inset for example, and another in the main image above the number '3'). On that basis I'm identifying my fungus as Illosporiopsis (syn. Hobsonia) christiansenii.

Searching more generally for information about lichenicolous fungi I was rewarded by finding the splendid review article by Lawry and Diederich here. From this I learn that the whole research topic of lichenicolous fungi is enjoying a purple (pink?!) patch. From a single illustrated species (a gall on the lichen 'Usnea') in 1792, the number of known species grew steadily to reach around 686 in 1989. Over the past 10-years however, as scientists around the world have started look in earnest for such lichen-loving fungi, the number of known species has more than doubled.

With this explosion in species-count is coming a growing appreciation of just how rich a field-of-enquiry the lichenicolous fungi represent. Take the task of unravelling and understanding the interactions between the attacking fungus and its target lichen. Some fungi are very unfussy, being adaptable to a wide range of lichens. Others have a very intimate and specific relationship with only one or two hosts. Some invaders aggressively attack and kill their target lichen. Others are parasitic, insinuating their hyphae (=the long tube-like cells that make up a fungus) into the cells of their host to suck the juices, vampire-like, from their cells. Some lichenicolous fungi even stage a 'take-over' bid: A lichen is basically a fungus that is 'farming' a crop of algae (see my post here). The game plan of some lichenicolous fungi is to kill the 'farmer'-fungus' in order to acquire his algae.

There are more questions over how lichenicolous propogate and spread themselves. It's hypothesised that some may hitch a lift with roving, lichen-feeding mites. But generally not much seems to be known. There are unanswered questions about the sensitivity of lichenicolous fungi to air quality. Certainly some lichens are incredibly sensitive to impure air, unable to survive even trace amounts of pollution. Whether this holds for their attackers isn't known.

There are further questions about how lichenicolous fungi affect the ecology of a region. It's been argued by biologists that having a lot of parasites in some eco-system ought to encourage a lot of species diversity. Whether this is born out in regions where parasitic lichenicolous fungi are prevalent however is not well studied however.

These topics (and a lot more) are discussed in the review above. All in all, I suspect that any amateur naturalist hoping to make some genuine and lasting contribution to scientific understanding could do worse than to cultivate an interest in lichenicolous fungi!

To return to the pink blob species M. corallinus and I. christiansenii, and the paper I mentioned above by Sikaroodi et.al., a remarkable thing to learn was that these two nominally identical blobby fungi in fact represent two entirely separate fungal kingdoms. There are millions of species of fungi, but (crudely) they can be split into two huge groups. There is a huge group of fungi that grow their spores inside little sausage-shaped bags called asci (see photo 4 on my posting here). Such fungi are termed ascomycetes. The other group grow their spores, not inside asci, but on the ends of sausage-shaped protruberences called basdia. Such fungi are termed basidiomycetes. From everything I've read this is a very deep and ancient division, the ascomycota and basidiomycota representing an ancient 'parting on the ways' in the evolution of fungi. What's surprises me therefore, is that whilst M. corallinus and I. christiansenii seem almost indentical in every regard (both are small pink blobs, and both grow on the same types of lichens), whilst the former is a basidiomycete the latter is an ascomycete. Now, sometimes, entirely different lifeforms can end up evolving very similar bodies simply because these are the best bodies for the life they're trying to live ('convergent evolution'): Think 'whales' and 'fishes' or 'birds' and 'bats'. Have two very distant fungal cousins independently evolved the conclusion that if you want to survive on lichen, being a small pink blob is a good way to go? The plot only thickens when you learn that although DNA testing shows the species above to be members of the basidiomycota and ascomycota respectively (and therefore that they should grow their (sexual) spores in quite different ways) in fact for neither species has this (sexual) fruiting stage ever actually been seen! (Though it should be remarked that the same was true of the blob M. aurantiacus until recently when a fruit body ('teleomorph') was discovered by Diederich and co workers).

So there we have it. A tiny inconspicuous fungus occupying the (to our human eyes) minute and obscure niche of subsisting in the crevices of a lichen. And yet what a rich and unexplored natural history awaits.

"Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum"
( Augustus de Morgan, 1806-1871)

A mushroom Psathyrella lutensis

I am an amateur naturalist trying to identify everything living in my garden.

Photo 1 shows a small troop of mushrooms I found growing in some damp grass beneath my garden hedge.
From its general appearance my first thought was that these were a type of ink cap mushroom (see my previous posting here), but after watching them for a week there was no sign of any of the caps dissolving into an inky mess and it was clear further investigation would be needed.

The first thing to do when seeking to identify a mushroom is to take a spore print. This is extremely easy: place a cap, gills down, on any suitable surface, wait twenty minutes, remove, and hey presto - a spore print. That of my mushroom is shown in photo 2. Knowing spore colour (here, black) will typically allow you to rule out at least half the species in the average mushroom guide.

If you have a microscope it can also be valuable to ascertain spore shape and size. Mine were ovoid and around 12x6micron (photo 3).

Other features I noted for my mushroom were the the grooved (the technical term being striate) mostly brown cap, fading to white at the edge, and the 'flakey stem' (a.k.a. floccose stipe) in photo 1.

With these features in mind it was time to turn to the guide books. Unfortunately, such is the number of species of mushroom in Britain (more than 3000, with others, new to these shores, being recorded regularly) that no single guide book can cover them all. This proved the case for my mushroom. I failed to find it in the first three books I tried, the floccose stipe proving a rather troublesome feature, ruling out a number of otherwise similar small brown mushrooms in the books. It wasn't until I turned to my copy of Mushrooms and Toadstools (Cortecuisse and Duhem) that I found a picture of Psathyrella lutesnsis. All the features were there and I'm fairly confident in this indentification.

Cortecuisse describes P. lutensis as growing on damp ground (a fit with my location) and being scare-to-rare.

I have learnt in the course of writing this blog that almost any life form I come across will have some unique and curious aspect to its lifestyle (for example, its relationships with other creatures, its chemistry, or its means of reproduction). No doubt this is true of P.lutensis. Unfortunately my searches have failed to turn up any information about it whatsoever. Perhaps I have merely looked in the wrong places. On the other hand, so sporadic and fleeting may be its appearance that perhaps no one has ever studied my enigmatic little mushroom. If anyone knows more any more about it than merely its name, do please leave a comment.

The Collared Parachute mushroom Marasmius rotula

I am an amateur naturalist trying to catalogue all the life in my garden.

No, despite appearances to the contrary, I have not gone away! My camera has been kept busy over summer snapping pictures of a host of interesting creatures in my garden and it's high time I resumed the task of writing about them.

Some weeks ago I was clearing away a patch of weeds bordering my vegetable patch and I came across a troop of the lovely little mushrooms seen in photo 1 (click to enlarge). They seemed to be growing on a lump of decaying wood.

A quick look in my mushroom guide and I'm fairly confident my mushroom is a Collared Parachute Marasmius rotula.

I say 'fairly confident' as Marasmius bulliardii is similar in appearance though I read it is typically somewhat smaller than rotula and grows on leaves . You can find pictures of both, plus various other species, on the splendid Bioimages site and a key to some 60+ Marasmius species on Michael Kuo's site.

Had I gone to the trouble of taking a spore print (see my previous posting here), and assuming my mushroom is indeed M.rotula, I'd have found the spore colour was white. Under the microscope the spores are 7-10um x 3-4um in size and elliptical.

Turning to my copy of the excellent Fungi (Spooner and Roberts, publ. Collins) a nice thing to learn about Marasmius mushrooms is that one of them is amongst the world's oldest toadstools. A Marasimus-like mushroom ('Archeomarasiumus liggetti') was found, trapped in a 90 million year old piece of amber, in New Jersey by one David Hibbett, a Harvard mycologist. The American Museum of Natural History webpage carries a photo and Hibbett's webpage includes a link to his 1997 paper on the discovery ('Fossil mushrooms from the Cretaceous and Miocene ambers and the evolution of homobasidiomycetes' ).

And finally, the exceptionally sharp eyed of you may have spotted a second life form in photo 1, namely the little reddish insect clinging to the cap in the centre. Photo 2 shows a close up of the little critter. Some remarkably complex relationships exists between fungi and insects. The grubs of certain woodwasps for example, though partial to chomping holes in trees, are only able to ingest wood that has been first rotted by a fungus. Adult woodwasps therefore carefully transport this fungus in special grooves on their body and introduce it the same hole as their offspring. My little insect in photo 2 has a superficially wasp-like look about him or her, but his or her true identity and whether he or she has any sort of relationship with my mushroom, or simply happened to be passing through when I took the photo, I have no idea. If anyone of the experts out there can offer any information do please leave a comment.

Candlesnuff fungus Xylaria hypoxylon

I am an amateur naturalist trying to discover everything that lives in my garden.
Chomping its way through a fallen twig, photo 1 shows a collection of the 'candle wick-like' fruiting bodies of the Candlesnuff fugus Xylaria hypoxylon.

This fungus is very common here in the UK. Scan piles of logs or fallen branches and you're likely to spot it on almost any country walk.

In common with the holly leaf fungus I blogged recently, and the morel before that, X.hypoxylon is a member of the ascomycetae - a huge collection (phylum) of fungi that 'grow' their spores inside microscopic tubes called asci.

In the case of X. hypoxylon a couple of hunded asci are, in turn, packaged into a structure called a perithecium - basically a small 'pimple' with a hole in the top through which spores, once liberated from an ascus, escape. There's an excellent cross sectional microscope photograph of a perithecium of one on the mycolog site (it's a big webpage - the photo's about half way down).

To the eye, the perithecia of X.hypoxylon appear as tiny black pimples on the surface of the white 'candle wicks'. You can see some in photo 2. (Perithecia are common features of lichens also (see my post here).) Over time, the surface tends to become increasingly covered with these pimples (compare Photo 1 with Photo 3 taken about two weeks later) until finally the 'wick' ('compound ascoma') appears quite black. The resulting 'charred' look gives the name pyrenomycetes (from the Greek 'pyr' = fire) to the class of mushrooms of which X.hypoxylon is a member.

The definitive web site on the pyrenomycota is that of by J.D. Rodgers.

In fact the life cycle of X.hypoxylon is a little complex. The spores liberated by the pimply black perithecia are the result of sexual reproduction. X. hypoxylon is also able to reproduce asexually via so-called 'condiospores' however. These conidiospores give the fungus its white powdery appearance in photo 1.

Seen under the microscope, the sexual spores of different species of mushroom show characterisitic differences in size and shape (a helpful aid when trying to identify a mushroom - see my previous posting). I read on Michael Kuo's site however, that conidiospores from different fungi all look basically the same. Why nature has chosen to distinguish sexual and asexual spores in this fashion I can't imagine. Can anyone comment?

Trochila ilicicola A fungus on holly leaves

I am an amateur naturalist trying to learn a little about everything living in my garden.

For those of an inquisitive disposition, one of the wonderful things about natural history is its ability to generate an inexhaustible supply of questions one doesn't need to be a professional to either ask or investigate: Noticed something alive!? O.k., so what is it?...and what does it eat?... what eats it?...when does it mates, how does it mates?...You get the idea.

To supply a germane example: In a previous posting on my garden's holly tree, I reported being struck by the small number of creatures reported to derive nourishment from holly's tough and spiny leaves. This started me wondering about what creature might surmount the seemingly even tougher problem of eating dead holly leaves...

...photo 1 (click on photos to enlarge) shows a holly leaf I found in the leaf litter beneath my tree. Photo 2 shows a 100x magnified version of some of the small black dots decorating the surface upper-centre, and photo 3 some of the larger ones covering the remainder of the leaf.

It's perhaps no surprise to learn that the agent of decay of dead holly leaves is a fungus. Fungi are separated into two great divisions ('phyla'), the basidiomycota (=most of the familiar 'mushrooms') and the ascomycota which are typically small, cup shaped fungi (see a previous posting for more details). Clearly photo 2 shows my fungus to be one of the latter. The cup's inner surface (hymenium) is the site of spore production.

In the case of my holly-leaf, a little web searching (specifically of the encyclopaedic bioimages site) suggests the species of fungus at work is Trochila ilicicola. (A smaller question I do have however, is whether the two types of black spots - the smaller dimples of photo 2 , and larger pustules of photo 3 - might conceivably be two different species. Can anyone comment?)

I'm led to understand my cup fungus has a rather neat trick up it's sleeve, namely a hinged lid which it can open when conditions are damp (and hence good for liberating spores), and close when conditions are dry. I didn't get the opportunity to try observing this under the microscope, but you can find some photos on the fine mycolog site.

So there you have it. The next time you take a walk on an late autumn day when interesting natural history might seem in short supply, try picking up a dead leaf!

Glistening Inkcap Mushroom Coprinellus micaceus

I am an amateur naturalist trying to identify everything living in my garden.

After a goodly absence (apologies dear readers) it's time to return to the task of cataloguing my garden's life.

The first piece of news is that sadly I've had to remove (to my compost bin) a good proportion of the ivy I blogged here. This proved necessary as the sheer weight of ivy caused the collapse of my garden fence! A sad aspect to this is that, as I commented previously, my ivy has proved a popular nesting site with my garden birds (in clearing the foliage this time I uncovered a bird box I had previously stuffed into the ivy, containing an old robin's nest). The good news is firstly that ivy grows so aggressively in my garden that it's certain to recolonise swiftly as soon as I re-erect my fence, and secondly that in clearing it away I came across the subject-matter for today's posting, growing on some old logs: the mushrooms seen in photo 1 (click to enlarge).

I have a little knowledge of British fungi, so I was quickly able to identify my fungus as a Coprinus mushroom. The little "mica-like" flecks on the young caps helped me to identify my mushroom as Coprinus micaceus.

As the great majority of mushroom guides will tell you, there are more than a dozen British Coprinus species, all readily recognised by the characteristic that the whole cap of mature mushrooms "autodigests" and turns into a thick, black, inky, spore-laden liquid, as opposed to the more typical mushroom habit of liberating spores as "dry, airborne powder". You can see "ink" starting to ooze from the mushroom in the centre of photo 1 (the one with its stipe ("stem") touching the coin)...

...Except it turns out the books are wrong! More specifically, although it is true that several hundred mushroom species world-wide share this 'inky' habit, the approach that mycologists have traditionally taken of classifying them all as members of the genus Coprinus seems to be wrong: following DNA sequencing, Hopple and Vilgalys published a scientific paper in 1999, showing that many of the traditional "Coprinus" mushrooms are in fact unrelated to each other (at genus level at least). Worse still, the Coprinus "type species" (i.e. the species most neatly embodying the features of the Coprinus mushrooms = Coprinus comatus) turned out to be genetically rather atypical!

All of this means that mycologists are having to do some serious thinking about how to re-write the textbooks. The current approach is to divide the previous Coprinus genus, into four genera: a small collection of true Coprinus mushrooms and additionally the Coprinopsis, Coprinellus and the Parasola mushrooms. There's a very readable account of all this at Tom Volk's site.

I've known amateur naturalists who get rather heated about splitting and re-naming species, genera etc. on the basis of genetic analyses. 'Species', they say, 'should be defined according to what things look like in the field!'. I don't personally agree with this. To replace one genus with four, superfically identical genera may be inconvenient for the amateur, but at the end of the day if that's the scientific truth of things, I say 'so be it'. Mother Nature isn't obliged to set things up in a way that's convenient for the amatuer and the fact that she sometimes doesn't surely increases the fascination of the studying things?

One final thing that intrigues me is the phrase "mica-like flecks" that all the books seem to use when describing my mushroom, and lends itself to the species name "micaceous". Had I been the first to discover and name my mushroom, I imagine I might come up with "cottony" or "bobbley" to describe the young caps. I doubt the mineral mica, would have entered my head! Just about the one thing I know about mica comes from school physics lessons: namely that that it exhibits a curious optical phenomena known as double refraction (birefringence). You can see a nice photo here. I regret I didn't get a chance to experiment with my mushrooms to find out, but I just wonder whether the flecks on the caps perform any similar "optical magic". Does anyone know?

Two fungi on apples - Venturia inaequalis and a Mucoraceae species.

I am an amateur naturalist trying to discover everything living in my garden.

I have a cooking-apple tree growing in my garden (more on which in a future posting). It produces far more apples than I can cook and winter finds my lawn carpeted with a layer of rotting windfalls. At the time of writing, a flock of songbirds (blackbirds, thrushes, redwings, starlings, fieldfares and others) are visiting my garden daily to eat their fill. Birds are not the only things devouring my apples however...

Photo 1 (click to enlarge) shows an apple clearly afflicted with an outbreak of brown scabs. Recently I acquired a second hand copy of Garden Pests and Diseases (Brooks and Halstead, publ. Simon and Schuster) and from this, and some follow-up searches on the internet, I understand the cause to be a fungus called Venturia inaequalis.

V.inaequalis infects both the leaves and fruit of apple trees and is a member of the enormously numerous division of fungi, the ascomycota = those fungi that "ripen" their spores inside tiny, sausage-shaped tubes called asci (see here for my photo of some asci and here for some more description from me).

In the case of V. inaequalis the spore-containing acsi are, in-turn, packed inside a body known as a psuedoperithecium (a "spore salt-shaker"). I made a little effort myself to try to obtain a microscope photo of one of these, but the strength of my resolve was weakened when I found the matchless images on Tom Volk's website (in any case, I believe I'm unlikely to find a 'fruiting' scab as I've read the pseudoperithecia tend to occur in Spring and are more common on the leaves).

In terms of edibility, brown scabs on apples are entirely harmless (no doubt the same can't be said of the fungicides commerical growers spray on apples to prevent scabs appearing!). Indeed, I've even heard it suggested that amongst the reasons for an increased incidence of cancers in the Western population is our unwillingness to imbibe a healthy population of micro-fungi on our vegetables. I can't vouch for the scientific validity of this theory. I do know you'd need to be very hungry to eat the apple in photo 2!

Looking closely at photo 2 you might notice the small white patches of mould upper left and centre. Viewed under the microscope (approx 40x magnification) a strange and delicately beautiful structure is revealed (photo 3).
On the basis of looks alone (always dangerous when dealing with fungi) and the excellent photo's on this site, I'm identifying this as a member of order the mucoraceae, the 'pin-head' moulds. The 'pin-heads' are technically known as sporangia and are filled with spores. They turn black as the spores mature (as some have in the photo).

To attempt to pin down my mould to one of the three-hundred-or-so mucoraceae species is really the domain of experts. Increasingly DNA analysis is emerging as the only sure-fire method for the identification for micro- (and indeed some macro-) fungi. Taking a shot-in-the-dark however I'll go with Rhizopus stolonifer and invite the experts out there to correct me.

V.ineaqualis and and R.stolonifer are far from the only fungi to attack apples (see here), I'm quite sure more searching would turn up more (a project for a future posting perhaps). For now I'm happy to chalk-up two more species on my garden checklist.

Finally, I mentioned the birds above feeding on the apples on my lawn. Watching them it seems they actively seek out the more rotten apples. I wonder whether they get some health benefit from this (the consumption of pencillin moulds perhaps?), or is it simply that the mouldy ones are the softest and best-tasting. A case of Stilton cheese at Christmas!

A mushroom Conocybe siliginea

I am an amateur naturalist trying to discover the identity of everything that lives in my garden.

Growing on my lawn (at (1.0,1.0), see here) I found the little mushroom seen in photo 1. It's about 5cm tall with a 1.5cm diameter cap.

Unlike many of the natural history topics I'm encountering as part of my self-imposed project to identify the living things in my garden, I come to the fungi armed with a (very) little prior knowledge. Unfortunately, what my past studies have mostly taught me is that little white/brown mushrooms can be very difficult to identify! There are hundreds of species that match the description "small and whitish" and putting a name to one can be tricky, even for the experts.

Let's assume however, that you're an amateur determined to try to make progress. Where do you start? Firstly its essential you compile a detailed list of the fine features of your mushroom. Is the stem smooth or, as here (you'll need to click on the photo to enlarge) minutely powdery ('pruinose')? What colour are the gills? Do they contact the stem and run some way down it, or, as for my mushroom, are they essentially free of it? Does the flesh bruise a different colour when touched? (It didn't). And so on.

Next, its essential you take a spore print. Don't be put off - this is extremely easy to do. Simply place the cap of your mushroom, gills down, onto a sheet of paper or microscope slide, wait a while, remove and you'll find the surface has accumulated a fine dusting of spores (photo 2). Spore colour - white, black, brown (as here) or otherwise - is an extremely useful feature during identification. All good guide books include it in their descriptions.

Under a microscope incidentally, you really get an impression of just how prolific a producer of spores a mushroom really is. According to my copy of Fungi (Spooner and Roberts, Collins New Naturalist) a mushroom such as the common field mushroom (Agaricus campestris) may produce up to forty million spores an hour! Photo 3 shows a 100x close up of part of the thirty-minutes of spore production responsible for the spore print in photo 2.

Clearly you need to pick your mushroom to take a spore print. Within reason however, and provided you don't set out to decimate an area or pick especially rare species (see the list on the Fungus Conservation Forum website), this may be considered acceptable. Mushrooms themselves are basically fruit bodies. The main body of a fungus exists as a network of microscopic mycelial threads running through the soil. Picking a mushroom is analogous to picking an apple from a tree therefore (a tree with its branches running below ground and fruits popping up through the soil).

With a list of naked-eye features and a spore print, you may now be able to identify your mushroom. Unfortunately, for many species this is still not enough and further progress requires the use of a microscope (one with with a 1000x oil immersion lens).

Armed with such you can see features like those of photo 4. The blurry brown mass lower right is the edge of a gill. The brown, oval objects are spores. Spore shape and size (measured here as about 13.5um x 8.5um) varies between species and is another helpful feature for identification.

Yet another feature can be seen in photo 4 by clicking to enlarge and looking below the number '5' on the graticule. I believe (though here I am reaching the limits of my own expertise) the semi-transparent 'club shaped' entity seen there is an example of a cheilocystidium. Cheilocystidia are specialised cells that decorate the edges of the gills. Amazingly, it seems that no one really knows what they're for, but their shape and size can be yet another important diagnostic feature in your efforts to identify your mushroom.

And finally, coming back to my mushroom, what does the combination of creamy-white bell-shaped cap, cinnamon-brown gills and spore print, a fragile, pruinose stem, 13.5x8.5um oval spores and club-shaped cheilocystidia lead me to conclude about its identity ? Answer: growing on my lawn I have Conocybe siliginea...err, or possibly rickenii...or tenera...As I said, little white mushrooms are tricky!

POSTSCRIPT
...or possibly Concybe subovalis, which having had a few more appear on my lawn in recent days, and from the photos here, may be a good candidate.

A fungal rust Puccinia lagenophorae

I am an amateur naturalist trying to find out what lives in my garden.
I ended my most recent posting by saying that that a certain "elderly gentleman" had taken up residence in my garden and that he was not in the best of health. Photo 1 (click to enlarge) shows one of his leaves and the rusty brown patches afflicting it.

I know almost nothing about plant diseases, but a short time spent searching the Internet for diseases on groundsel convinced me that the cause of the brown patches on the leaves is Puccinia lagenophorae, an example of a fungal rust.

A close up (photo 2, 40x magnification) shows the cup-like fungal craters produced in the leaf. I believe these may be what are technically termed the rust's spore producing aecidia.

The technical name for the rusts is the Urediniomycetes. From my copy of Fungi (Spooner and Roberts, Collins NN, 2005) I learn there are about 7000 species worldwide and 260 in Britain of which 14 are new here since 1966, suggesting there are still more to be discovered. They have a complex and fascinating life cycle, though one rather alien to us. They can go through periods of sexual cross-fertilization in which they exude nectar-like liquids to attract "pollinating" insects, other periods as airborne spores and still others as thick-walled teleutospores designed to lie dormant over winter and germinate in the spring. Some parasitise different plants at different points in their life cycle, changing their form and appearance as they do so. This site has some more details. I find it wonderful to think that such intricate and complex patterns of life are carrying on quietly in the little places of my garden.

Puccinia lagenophorae has an interest all of its own: it is a relative new comer to the UK having arrived here from Australia only in the 1960's (it was first recorded on groundsel in Dungerness in Kent in 1961). Until recently it was unknown in the US, but is apparently now making an appearance there also. P. lagenophorae's ability to attack groundsel - an agricultural weed - has led to it being investigated as a 'biological weedkiller'. Marigolds and Oxford Ragwort may apparently also be attacked

Finally, one thing I'm not clear about from my reading is how terminal infection is for my plant. Is my weed almost certainly 'doomed' or is it more akin to him having caught a bad cold? If someone out there can tell me, do please leave a comment.

The Yellow Morel Morchella esculenta

I am an amateur seeking to identify every living thing in his garden.

I have a galvanised-metal incinerator bin in my garden, the lid of which can see be seen in photo 1 (I am sure you will be fascinated to see it!). Said lid has, for some months, been lying untouched at one edge of my lawn (at (1.2,1.9) - see here). On a whim I lifted it recently expecting I might discover a beetle or two to act as raw material for this blog. I was surprised and delighted however, to discover the entity shown in photo 2 (click on it to enlarge).

I feel fairly confident in identifying my mushroom as the Yellow Morel (Morchella esculenta - see Rogers mushrooms for more photos), an edible mushroom highly prized by chefs (though it is worth adding that morels should not be eaten raw and worse, the superficially similar-looking False morel (Gyromitra esculenta) can be deadly poisonous).

It is probably no coincidence to find a morel in close proximity to my garden incinerator since morels are often associated with burnt ground. According to my copy of Fungi (B. Spooner & P. Roberts, publ. Collins New Naturalist and refs. therein) in times past "the peasants...of germany...set fire to forests in order to obtain these fungi".

Why the curious shape? The short answer is that if, like fungi, you are in the business of reproducing by allowing air currents to carry away your spores, it pays to maximise the surface area you present to the passing breeze; Hence the many pits and grooves on the morel.

A more in-depth answer (of sorts) is as follows: The fungi are a huge kingdom of perhaps nine-million (!) species outnumbering vascular plants by perhaps six-to-one. People who study fungi (mycologists) break this kingdom down into two great divisions ('phyla'), the basidiomycota and the ascomycota. The majority of the more familiar mushrooms and toadstools (i.e. "caps-on-stalks with gills underneath"), including most edible mushrooms, fall in the basidiomycota. The ascomycota on the other hand are generally less familiar, although both morels and truffles fall in this phylum. Unlike the basidiomycota with their "gills", the ascomycota typically try to maximise their surface area by presenting concave "cups" to the air. The morel's complex surface is nature's attempt to pack lots of 'cups' side-by-side.

Under the microscope there is a more fundamental difference between basidio- and ascomycota: Whilst the basidiomycota produce 'free' spores on the spaghetti-like hyphae (see a previous posting) that make up the fungus (like apples on the branches of a tree), the ascomycota on the other hand produce spores inside special hollow tubes called 'asci' (like peas in a pod). The asci eventually rupture to liberate the spore. I gathered a small piece of my morel and at x1000 magnification (1 small graticule division = 1um, see photo 3, click to enlarge) the asci are clearly visible. One touches the numbers '0' and '1' on the graticule. A free spore is also visible at '6' .

Finally, I learn from the book above that the world market for morels is worth more than one-billion pounds per annum. "Lot 1 ladies and gentlemen, a genuine Oxfordshire yellow morel. Shall we start the bidding at one-hundred guineas...?"

POSTSCRIPT
As you will see from the comments, those familar with fungi are appreciative of my good fortune in finding a morel. I cannot resist adding a quote therefore, that was sent to me by an acquaintance. I am informed it is taken from It's My Delight by Brian Vesey-FitzGerald published in 1947 "Hares....are also very fond of fungi, especially the mushrooms, the various puff-balls, Scotch-Bonnets, Shaggy Ink Caps, and several others. They will invade gardens to get at morels which often grow in borders" [my emphasis]. Rather sad to think of what has been lost.

Calloria neglecta

I am attempting to identify all the life in my garden. The benefit of being an amateur naturalist is that you can, and will, routinely find things that confuse and confound you, but learn a great deal in the process. My previous posting is just such an example.

Having failed to conclusively establish the identify of the small fungus/slime mould on my bird table, I thought I ought to try to redress the balance by posting an example of a small fungus that I am fairly confident to have identified correctly (until someone makes me eat my words that is!):

Last summer my garden hosted (at (1.2,2.0)) a patch of nettles (Urtica dioica - more in future postings). Over winter these have died back to bare woody stems and it is on these I am finding a tiny orange fungus (photo 1 - you'll need to click on it to enlarge it and make out the fungus).

Based on a similar photo in The Encyclopedia of Fungi (M. Jordan, publ. Francis Lincoln 2004), and other photo's I've found on the web, and although I wasn't able to find any spores under the microscope (normally a strong help in identifying fungi), I'm fairly confident in naming my fungus as Calloria neglecta.

From what I can ascertain C. neglecta grows only (?) on the stems of nettles. This seems a remarkably niche existence to me, but then, having recently read Fungi (Spooner and Roberts, Collins New Naturalist, 2005) and discovered that there are some fungi that live only in the intestines of woodlice I suppose a nettle stem is positively suburban!

Strictly, most images I've found of C. neglecta show the fungal bodies rising to some extent from their nettle stem, whereas under a hand lens mine seem to be simply orange coloured patches of negligible thickness. Since the description in the book above however, includes the statement:

"The conidial stage... [of C. neglecta]...is more commonly encountered"

(For those not familiar with this term, 'conidial' refers to a form of asexual reproduction that some fungi are able to undertake)

and since also the (very nice) photos on the web page of Piotr Perz are referred to as images taken

"...one month after the conidial stage Cylindrocella urticae"

I'm going to take a guess and say my diffuse orange spots are the conidial stage of Calloria neglecta (though I've not been able to find an explicit description or photo of this as yet). I'll leave it to the experts out there to correct me!

A slime mould (nee fungus) on the birdtable

POST-PUBLICATION UPDATE: As readers will see from the comments appended to this post, I'm inclined now to think that what I call a 'fungus' in the posting below is in fact the slime mould (myxomycete) Lycogala epidendrum.

Given my status as an untrained amateur, it has always been inevitable that during my mission to identify all the living things in my garden life I would meet things that stump me. Today's post marks one.

I have an old wooden bird table in my garden. Growing along one edge is the fungus seen in photo 1 (click on it to enlarge).

In a blatant display of plagiarism (see here !) I'd be pleased if any reader can "Name That Mushroom!"

The fungal bodies are small (~1-5 mm) 'blobs' that lack any obvious sign of a structure (stalks, cups etc.) under a hand lens. Until recently they were a more vivid red/orange. Old age and recent bout of snow has left them past their best.

Under the microscope the fungal mycelia are clear (photo 2, 1000x, 1 small division=1micron) . (For anyone reading not familiar with fungi: the mycelia are the 'spaghetti-like' threads. These make up the body of the fungus).

I am not at all expert on the microscopic caracterisitics of fungi, but I think the mycelia are uniseptate (again, for the unfamiliar: looking on the photo just above "7.5" on the graticule, you'll see a thin cross wall - a 'septum' - in the mycelial thread). There was no obvious blue reaction with Melzer's reagant.

A further puzzle is that despite a considerable time spent carefully scanning samples under the microscope I failed to find a single spore or ascus (='tube' full of spores). I am used to seeing large numbers of spores if ever I view larger, more familiar mushrooms. I'm not sure whether my failure to find any in this case is due to there being a greater skill/element of timing in finding them for the smaller fungi, or whether it is that I'm not correctly interpreting what I am seeing. I read, for example, that some smaller fungi spread by 'thallic conidiogenesis' (see here for some nice animations illustrating what this means). For all I know, maybe this is happening and perhaps even visible in the photo to the experts out there.