With the square under snow I revisited a small ascomycete pulled from a rotten log at the weekend which had given me the runaround the previous evening. Finally after scouring the books and some false starts on the keys I nailed it down. Funnily enough as soon as I knew what it was I was able to see features that had eluded me though they were obvious. Ascocoryne sarcoides is a frequent sight in any woodland but one disc of it's congener Ascocoryne cylichnium completely threw me. There was only one disc, hence the keying false starts. Only working back from the fantastic spores was I able to put the other pieces in place. These spores bud off mini-spores, which is a very funky thing to do. You can see from the pics below that the images are full of these tiny spores which I had managed not to see as significant until I already knew they were. Anyway, it was a nice small victory and a nice lifer to bring up the 250th species
 |
| chopped in half for squishing |
 |
| Ascus tips blued with iodine |
 |
| Spores and tons of mini-spores |
 |
| Spore illustration in Dennis |
 |
| Fungi of Switzerland |
 |
| Spore and baby |
This morning I was stuck in weather related traffic so baled out and went for a ten minute walk, managing to snag a nice winter thrush combo without waiting until October
 |
| Fieldfares |
So now I'm at 252 and everything else this month is a bonus. Some of the categories I'm already past last year's February total, so all in all very happy with the start. Let's see whether my new kitchen fitting screws up the rest of the month!
A bonus one because (a) it's nice and (b) probably everyone else can find it on Betula twigs near them - Pseudovalsa lanciformis. This was species 247 or something
No comments:
Post a Comment