Collins Mushroom Miscellany. Patrick Harding

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СКАЧАТЬ of specimens for further examination later or, if all else fails, to send to an expert. If possible, collect several specimens in all stages of development. Even if the mushroom subsequently turns out to be rare, there is no evidence that collecting fruitbodies will do any more damage than the picking of apples from a fruit tree. Collect the whole fruitbody; do not snap or cut off the stem base as this can result in diagnostic features being left behind. For species growing on wood, try to remove the fruitbody with some of the attached wood. A penknife is an essential part of the mushroom hunter’s kit.

      Make a record of any features that may disappear in transit. These may include a distinctive smell, texture or colour change brought about by handling the fungus. Mushrooms need to be transported back to base in a manner that prevents them from drying out or being damaged, but never in a plastic bag where they will quickly disintegrate into a soggy mess. Kitchen foil, waxed paper or plastic tubs will protect the specimens. Before moving on, try to pinpoint the location of the find (GPS helps) and note the habitat, e.g. ‘among moss on a slope’ or ‘growing from a beech stump’. The identification of associated trees or other plants may require a leaf or bark sample.

      The feature that is most useful for the identification of any fungus, and especially for mushrooms and toadstools, is the colour of its spore print. A spore print is obtained by placing the fruitbody, gill (or tube) face-down, on a piece of glass or white paper and leaving it for up to 12 hours. Cover the fruitbody to prevent it drying out and be aware that white spores may need to be searched for on white paper; however, coloured paper may distort the spore colour. The true colour is best observed from a thick deposit of the spores. Try to distinguish different shades; brown may not be enough. The difference between a rusty-brown or purple-brown spore print will help to narrow down the group to which the specimen belongs.

      Good photographs (from above and below) of the fresh specimen can be useful, but a sketch using crayons or watercolour is often better. Remember to indicate the scale as size may be important. The colour of the spore print (if produced) should be included. At this point it should be possible to identify the specimen, at least to its genus, using one of several identification books aimed at the general public (see details on page 204). If this is not possible and an unusual find is suspected, a dried sample will be required to back up any photographs, drawings and notes. Unless it is very large (when the fruitbody will need to be sliced), dry the whole specimen above a radiator or another heat source.

      The next course of action is to take the specimen to a member of a local fungus group (see here) or enquire whether any nearby museum has a fungus expert on the staff. If all else fails the dried specimen, along with the details outlined above, can be sent to The Mycology Section, Jodrell Laboratory, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 3AB. Remember to enclose a stamped addressed envelope to ensure a reply.

      In the autumn of 1998 I was teaching an adult education evening class in Sheffield on Mushrooms and Toadstools. As usual, many of the participants came to the class bearing fungi that they wanted naming. Towards the end of the course, in early December, when the supply of specimens had tailed off, a class member called Dave Buckle arrived with what looked like a deflated, orange-pink squash ball. As I had not seen anything quite like it in any of the identification books I sent it off to Kew along with a note to the effect that it had been found by Mr Buckle among damp soil on a path near Knaresborough.

      The immediate reply from Brian Spooner informed me that the strange find was an ascomycete relative of the truffles called Paurocotylis pila. The fungus is native to New Zealand and was first recorded in Britain from nearby Nottinghamshire, also in December, in 1973. The earliest Yorkshire record known to Kew was in 1990, and it has since been found in several Scottish locations, including the Orkney Islands. All the evidence indicates that it is spreading. It may have been originally introduced from the southern hemisphere along with garden plants brought in by boat or plane, but its subsequent spread appears to involve more mundane forms of transport. The first Sheffield record turned up less than 2 years after Dave’s Knaresborough find. It was discovered growing at the edge of a track that had recently been renovated by a group called Sheffield Environmental Training; the same organisation that had arranged the visit to Knaresborough where Dave had made his original find.

      New records are turning up in other habitats, not least those associated with tropical and subtropical plants grown in greenhouses and conservatories. During the past 20 years some of the most exciting new records have come from a relatively new habitat, surfaces covered with woodchip. For those wishing to find mushroom species that may not yet feature in the identification books, the story of mushrooms and woodchips is related in Chapter Eleven.

Climate Change

      Fly agaric Amanita muscaria

      On the last day of June 2007I was walking, with my wife Jean, around the reservoirs that feed the fountains and waterworks of the Derbyshire gardens at Chatsworth. As we came to an area of mature birch trees Jean went off in search of fly agarics (Amanita muscaria). ‘I think you are being a bit optimistic’, I said, ‘they rarely fruit before September’. Minutes later Jean pointed triumphantly to the white-spotted, red cap that was pushing through the soil. One swallow does not make a summer, but this first fruiting date for fly agaric was nearly 2 months earlier than local ‘first’ records collected during the 1970s.

      With the growing reality of climate change, there have been frequent media reports indicating that the first flowering date of some of our common spring flowers is, on average, many days earlier than records from 40 or 50 years ago. The records of first flowering dates made by Victorian naturalists has enabled comparisons to be made over a time-scale as long as 150 years. At the other end of the season, many British deciduous trees are keeping their leaves well into November; the average date of leaf fall is getting later. Such records have led to a growing interest in phenology, the study of the seasonal timing of life-cycle events such as the deposition of frog spawn.

      Anecdotal evidence that the fruiting season for some fungi is both starting earlier and finishing later is supported once again by my own observations of fly agaric. Since the early 1990s I have featured on numerous television programmes about Christmas, with particular reference to a link between Father Christmas and the red and white fly agaric (see here). In the Gem Mushroom book first published in 1996,I noted that the season for fly agaric was ‘late summer to early winter’, finishing by the end of November. This meant that fruiting had finished before I was filmed for the Christmas programmes and I had to make do with models. In 2006, when filming for the Christmas sequence of Castle in the Country, I was able to use real fly agarics for the first time; they carried on fruiting well into December that year.

      Unlike the long sequence of records made by thousands of amateur botanists and ornithologists (listening for the first cuckoo), it is only recently, with the formation of more county fungus groups, that there have been sufficient, reliable, annual fungal records from which first and last fruiting dates for a local area can be ascertained. Two members of the Salisbury and District Natural History Society ensured that for part of south Wiltshire and the New Forest there would be fungal records going back to the 1950s. Ted Gange and Jim Hindley documented their sightings of over 1,000 different species and over the years built up some 55,000 dated records which have recently been analysed by, among others, Ted’s son Alan.

      Of the spring fruiting mushrooms, the average first fruiting date for morel (Morchella esculenta) in the 1950s, in their area, was 13th May. By 2006 the average had moved to 3rd April, some 40 days earlier. Earlier fruiting was found to be closely linked to a significant increase in average February temperatures over СКАЧАТЬ