Bracket on ash stump assistance please

[watsthat]

I was looking around The Humber Bridge Country Park yesterday, fungi were in short supply but I came upon this specimen growing on what may have been dead Sambucus nigra. The characteristic dark line between the trama and the tube layer was evident without resorting to pressing the samples. Is this only the 3rd record of Bjerkandera fumosa in VC61 in 120 years?

Feed back very much appreciated

Pete

[fairplay]

I'm sure there are going to be many more to follow.

Because of the publicity on this forum, I'd imagine there is going to be a ten fold increase in the amount of people, maybe not out searching for it, but being able to recognise it when they do see it.

Nice find.

Neil.

[watsthat]

Thanks Neil,

Whilst I whole heartedly agree that records are a very important facility; does my experience call into question the interpretation of the results? e.g. fungi easy to identify will be recorded more often because of that and fungi that are not easy to identify, (quite a lot fall into this category), will not be recorded. So rarity, as evidenced by the data base, may be more about how easy a fungus is to identify?

Pete

[fairplay]

If you were to look up all records of Amanita muscaria var.muscaria found in East Suffolk on the BMS database, you will find, dah dahh, ... 1

This is despite Martin and Pam Ellis (Suffolk's best known mycologists) having retired to this area, and despite my living in this Vice County - to our shame, we probably view this species as so common and predictable that there isn't much point in recording it.

So what does this say for all the other records, there are just so many variables such as is Suffolk alone in this respect ?

Neil.

[Chris Yeates]

Originally Posted by watsthat

I was looking around The Humber Bridge Country Park yesterday, fungi were in short supply but I came upon this specimen growing on what may have been dead Sambucus nigra. The characteristic dark line between the trama and the tube layer was evident without resorting to pressing the samples. Is this only the 3rd record of Bjerkandera fumosa in VC61 in 120 years?

Feed back very much appreciated

Pete

I've done a bit of looking around, and actually probably the 4th record

Originally Posted by watsthat

. . . . . . fungi easy to identify will be recorded more often because of that and fungi that are not easy to identify, (quite a lot fall into this category), will not be recorded. So rarity, as evidenced by the data base, may be more about how easy a fungus is to identify?

Pete

boy this begs a lot of (interesting) questions; some points strike me:

• when thinking about larger fungi - particularly toadstools - many of those which are common are also easy to identify
  
• these fungi are often the ones found while one is having a general wander around, rather than having to do some slow and careful searching; so as well as easy to identify they are easy to find
  
• of course the vast majority of fungi are small (often very small), and will not be found unless specifically searched for, or unless the searcher is interested in those types of fungi
  
• following on from the above - virtually every patch of dead nettles you examine will have Leptosphaeria acuta, Torula herbarum and Dendryphium comosum (there are hundreds of such examples); these fungi are easy to identify (OK you need a microscope, but you don't need hours of agonising as you might with an Entoloma - one look down the 'scope and - with experience - they're named)
  
• some micro-fungi seem to be ever-presents in the right circumstances; for example there is a fascinating little fungus called Stigmidium ascophylli which lives (apparently mutualistically) in the receptacles of the seaweed Ascophyllum nodosum, knotted wrack; if you find the seaweed in the correct stage of its development, the fungus will be there (and this is a common seaweed) - but how many records are there of this? (read more about this fungus here British Fungi - record details

I could go on . . . . I think the general point is that fungi with lots of records are indeed common, but there are diverse reasons why equally common fungi may have few records

cheers

Chris