Birds Nest Fungi

Ditiola · #1 (**permalink**) 05-08-2009, 07:51 PM

I was delighted to find lots of Crucibulum lavae amongst wood chip on shrub beds in my local park. I had found the odd one or two in previous years but this year it was abundant. It appears to be spreading on the shoes of the gardening staff. there were patches where they had firmed in lable posts with there feet and where they had put one foot onto the bed to reach the middle with a hoe. I presume the sticky perioles stick to their shoes, perhaps wild animals and birds also spread it this way.

I was estatic on my last vist to take some photo's when I found another Birds Nest Fungus, Cyathus striatus only a few meters from a patch of crucibulum I was photographing, amazing, I have never found this one before and I did not know it grew in the midlands. It was more in the soil than on the wood chip, and it was spread along the edge where the soil meets the grass and where the beds are edged with edging shears, for about 2 linear m.

Peter