Prompted by a recent find of
Hericium erinaceus by fellow Wabber and Mushketeer Garry Rickard, and subsequently quizzing him on it's location to discover, not entirely surprisingly, that it was in the New Forest (Check the WAB
Gallery 
), I decided to see what the two national databases revealed about the distribution of this species.
Interestingly the very limited evidence from WAB was also borne out by the BMS FRDBI data base where over 50% of the 266 records are from the New Forest (VC11). In stark contrast, of the 37 ABFG CATE records of this species showing in ten vice counties, none are from the New Forest. CATE data readily endorsed the Checklist of the British & Irish Basidiomycota in it's statement that it is "Virtually confined to old deciduous woodland in southern and south-western England". Gleaning such a breakdown by VC and habitat from the FRDBI was far too laborious but as the basis of the Checklist it undoubtedly concurs.
The shortcomings of both routes of investigation are self evident and it will be interesting to hear what Paul Kirk has to say on the subject of "The Way Forward with FRDBI" during discussions at the forthcoming BMS Annual Open Meeting at Kew on Saturday. In the aftermath it would be encouraging to the field community within both camps to learn that hatchets were to be buried and resources combined to give the widest possible scope in one dataset or that the BMS were going to follow the ABFG lead and make investment to provide their unmatchable fund of data in an up-to-date easily analysed format.
David