Nature, as we know, is pretty amazing. You don’t have to wait long before something new comes along to surprise you, making encouraging, observing and recording wildlife so rewarding. This proved the case yet again on new years day 2024 when out in the Garden we spotted a new species of fungi, our first new Garden species of the year. Check this clump out…
We believe this to be Coprinellus micaceus, which is a very common fungi associated with deadwood. In this case the dead wood in question was the Buddleia stump we removed when prepping the middle level of the Garden for the new pond (see our September 2023 diary entry HERE).
Wikipedia has lots of information on this species so worth checking out. We were particularly interested to note it prefers to feed off the bark of the plant rather than the wood itself. The bark of buddliea is very brittle and seems to take years to rot down, so hopefully this fungi is helping to speed up this process. Nature tidying up after herself again.
C.micaceus belongs to a group of fungi referred to as the Ink Caps, and for very good reason. By the next day our clump above looked like this…
This species is known to be delicate and disintegrates freely. We attempted to get a spore print from it but the mushroom we had was too far “over” and the following was the result, more mush than spore.
A spore print is when you take the head of a ripe, but not over ripe mushroom and place it gills down on a piece of white paper, having first removed the stem. After a day or so, if all goes well, the spores will have fallen from the gills and created a pattern which, along with the spore colour, can help identify the species.
It seems likely that this wasn’t the only new species recorded on new years day. A unknown moss was spotted growing on the soil surface. We think we know the genus but will try and get a species ID.
Our December / final diary entry for 2023 is now on our diary page (see HERE). You’ll note we recorded two species of Rotifer to genus level during December. We can confirm we have now added a third Rotifer to our list, in the form of a Mytilina spp, click HERE for details. The image below we appreciate is poor, but these are very common organisms so we should be able to get something clearer.
Note: As Rotifers are a whole new Phylum of animal for us, we may take a while building up the relevant page to provide more information on these rather interesting micro-organisms.
DC: 02/01/2024
Wildlife Garden 