A small fungi for ID please

[alindsay]

This beautiful, delicate fungi was found on a mossy area on sand dunes, this month and it is about the size of a penny.

I am hazarding a guess at Moss Omphalia (Gerronema ericetorum), but I stand to be corrected .......









Thanks in advance.

[fairplay]

Summut rare, is all I can say.

Gerronema ericitorum has true gills, what is shown here are swollen veins.

Neil.

[Chris Yeates]

Originally Posted by alindsay

This beautiful, delicate fungi was found on a mossy area on sand dunes, this month and it is about the size of a penny.

I am hazarding a guess at Moss Omphalia (Gerronema ericetorum), but I stand to be corrected .......









Thanks in advance.

Hi

firstly let's get the fungus/fungi thing sorted - there's only one species represented here (and indeed only one individual of one species) so it's not a "fungi"

now to the serious stuff - tell me you have collected it and taken it home dried it and carefully kept it in an old envelope with the collection details . . . . ?

because, as Neil has suggested, this could be something interesting - there is this species for example (considered to be an arctic species, but stranger things have happened - whereabouts were you? don't remember many dunes last time I was in Bedfordshire):

Hymenophore with venose, forked and anastomosing ridges; gregarious on low mosses, e.g. Campylium and Pohlia in open meadows or on sea cliffs on salt influenced sea shores in the arctic. Cap 5-33(-42) mm, low convex with broadly and shallowly depressed centre to slightly funnel-shaped, with incurved, crenulate, somewhat lobed, wavy margin, smooth, innately fibrillose, translucently striate at margin to halfway towards centre, hygrophanous, pale grey brown, greyish ochre, olivaceous brown to dark sepia brown, paler at centre, drying pale beige to almost white; hymenophore pale olive grey, pale grey brown or pale beige; stem 2-16 x 2-6 mm, central to eccentric, cylindrical to compressed, tapering towards base, pubescent to tomentose, base white tomentose, concolorous with cap or slightly paler; flesh soft, semitransparent, pale olive grey, drying whitish; smell and taste indistinct. Sp (7-)7.5-10(-11) x 5.5-8.5 µm, subglobose, ellipsoid or broadly dacryoid (fig. 229E); basidia 4-spored; cystidia absent; pileipellis a cutis; clamps present. Summer to autumn; very rare in arc./alp.;
. . . . . .
A. salina (Høil.) Bon & Courtec. (Leptoglossum s. Høil., L. littorale Høil. non Rostrup, A. littoralis (Høil.) Høil.)

(the above from Funga Nordica) - I'm certainly not saying it is that (in fact it's not known as a British species so it's highly unlikely) but without a specimen we'll never know . . . .

for what it's worth I would definitely plump for Arrhenia as the genus, though; it has some of the characteristics of A. spathulata, but that is quite a well-developed central stipe there

I await Andreas's comments with interest

cheers

Chris

[alindsay]

......will my old Latin teacher be cross with me on the fungi/fungus point. Will do better next time.

The sand dunes were on the Fylde coast and unfortunately thinking it pretty, but not unusual at the time, after photographing/feeling/smelling it, I left the FUNGUS behind.

I note though, in Chris's description is the word gregarious, whereas I can confirm that I only saw this one in the whole area.

Thanks for the Arrhenia suggestion and having googled the genus, I can see the characteristics are similar.