Bhutan 1

Arriving at Bhutan Friday to do teaching and field work, we (Thomas Læssøe, Morten Christensen, Mikako Sasa and I) made our first small field trip Saturday to the national park close to the capital Timphu.

This valley has the most impressive forest, a mixture of Quercus species, Tsuga, Abies and other trees.

One of the first fungi we saw was a young specimen of the heterobasidiomycete-polypore Elmerina holophaea.

An other very beautiful fungus in wood was Mycena leaiana with yellow gill edge.

On the leaves there were lots of small discomycetes and also this surprising "Mycena" which turned out to be porois, thus maybe belonging to the genus Poromycena.

The rainy season has just begun and we hope the next weeks will lure more fungi up from the ground!

Fungal Identification Chart

The Fungal Identification Chart is an attempt to sort the major form groups in an easy way. If you are teaching beginners about fungal identifications this may be of help - be free to use it. You can download a larger version for A4 printing here.

http://www.iucnredlist.org/documents/amazingspecies/pleurotus-nebrodensis.pdf

Please find Pleurotus nebrodensis featured here at the most amazing etc species site for threatened species under the IUCN umbrella

Two fungi in top ten, 2011

The International Institute of Species Exploration (Arizona State University) each year publishes a list of the ten most astonishing species described during the year. For the 2011 list, two fungi were included: Mycena luxaeterne and Psathyrella aquatica.

Mycena luxaeterna Desjardin, B.A. Perry & Stevani is a strongly bioluminescent agaric described from Brazil (Desjardin, D.E., B.A. Perry, D.J. Lodge, C.V. Stevani, and E. Nagasawa. 2010. Luminescent Mycena: new and noteworthy species. Mycologia 102(2):459- 477. LINK).

Psathyrella aquatica R.A. Coffan, J.L. Frank & D. Southw. is a species of Psathyrella apparently growing under water in a river i Oregon (Aquatic gilled mushrooms: Psathyrella fruiting in the Rogue River in southern Oregon. Mycologia 102(1): 93-107 LINK. -- alas, behind a paywall).

Candidates for the next list can be nominated here.

BMS spring foray 4 – Fuscolachnum misllum

We were working hard on dead leaves of Rubus fructicosus to find Mollisina rubi. This turned up to be a hard job which gave all sorts of unexpected results. The most common fungus was Fuscolachnum misellum:

There was also Pyrenopeziza maculans an undescibed Naeviopsis, an undescribed Vibrissea, Calycellina indumenticola, Echinula asteriadiformis, Mollisina oedema and at last Mollisina rubi:

Rubus may hurt your fingers but there are rewards in the end . . .

Pyrenomycete from coniferous wood

I have this nice pyrenomycete with aggregated black immersed perithecia with and protruding ostioles from Picea (Pinus?) wood. Asci cylindrical, thin-walled, lacks apical apparatus, inamyloid, p. sp. 40-50 x 4-5 mym, not floating like in Diaporthe. Ascospores 8 per ascus, obliquely uniseriate, 7-8 x 2-3 mym, cylindrical, two-celled with central septum, rounded ends, greyish, with 2 small oil drops. Paraphyses simple, longer than asci, ca 1,5 mym broad. Peridium medium brown, of rounded cells ca 4 mym in diameter. Thankful for suggestions.