hi Rob
to the best of my knowledge there are three records of this from Yorkshire, but treating them in the sense of
Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca var.
pallida (Cooke) Kühner & Romagn. I have included them in the Yorkshire Checklist as synonyms of
H. aurantiaca perhaps they need re-evaluating . . . .
two of them are from near Beverley - and the recorder
is a good mycologist, the third is a 1984 record of mine from Crimsworth Dean, near Hebden Bridge (more 'upland' than Beverley! - I did collect material and shall try to chase it up . . .)
I note that this taxon was raised from varietal to specific status by Tom Kuyper; I have collected this on a BMS foray many years ago when Tom was actually with us and he named it in the field . . . . I have always been wary of washed-out specimens - think of some of the 'varieties' of meadow wax-cap!)
Legon & Henrici say: "Frequently reported, but usually unsubstantiated with voucher material."
I have just had a look at Derek Reid's description of this taxon, from "FUNGORUM RARIORUM ICONES COLORATAE. part 6 (1972):
"There is in Britain another, hitherto unnamed, variety of
H. aurantiaca which is distinguished in having much larger, dextrinoid spores, measuring
8.0-11.0(-13.0) X 3.0-4.5(-5.0) u. Macroscopically this taxon is very like var. aurantiaca; it has a creamy-tan cap with felty-fibrillose surface, yellowish forked gills, and a stipe which is concolorous with the pileus but becomes darker on handling. Apart from the larger spores the microcharacters agree with those of the var.
aurantiaca. This new variety I propose to call var.
macrospora.
Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca var.
macrospora Reid, var. nov.
Pileus coacto-fibrillosus, cremeo-alutaceus. Lamellae dichotome ramosae, flavidae. Stipes cremeo-alutaceus, fuscescens ubi contusus. Characteres microscopici ut in varietate aurantiaca, praeter sporas magnas, 8.0-11.0(-13.0) X 3.0-4.5(-5.0)µm
Amongst tufts of
Juncus in dried-up pond, Howldale, Pickering, Yorkshire,
coll. W. G. Bramley [K/64/23] , 1 Nov. 1964. [TYPUS]."
This is a record I have missed in the past
!
So the type is from Yorkshire - note also that the NBN map has missed this type collection - I suspect that a number of those dots are errors for pale
aurantiaca, as most seem to be paper transfers of '
pallida' records (and the name
pallida is ambiguous in this context), rather than being based on re-examinations of voucher material
so, I'm afraid I think the spores of yours are probably too small
- I am also a little suspicious of that two-tone cap which is something I encounter every so often - but I shall be measuring spores of likely candidates in future
and absence of trees I would not treat too seriously as a pointer - as I mentioned on WAB recently
Hygrophoropsis is a saprophytic genus
cheers
Chris
Edit - I think it very misleading of
Funga Nordica not to have included Reid's spore measurements in their description; it is standard practice to indicate such variences - even if ones own measurements differ
Linear Mode
