The weather was mostly dry today so a quick nose in the Garden was in order and whilst shifting some cut branches about we came across the following…
…which we can only describe as a fungi doing an impression of an acorn. But fungi they clearly were, however being only partially emerged we didnt expect to be able to identify them. We also came across the following on another branch next to this one…
…and have to admit our initial thought was we had found a red moss of some sort. Both these images seemed unusual enough to be worth running through one of the many identification apps available to download these days.
The first images came back with a genus level result, suggesting our fungi belongs to the genus Coprinellus, which if you read our 2nd January post, was the genus to which our first new species of the year belonged, Coprinellus micaceus. We naturally assumed that the two records were of the same species, having grown from the same dead plant. However, when we ran the second image through the ID app it came back not with a moss (or a slimemold, or a lichen) but with a fungi species identification, Coprinellus domesticus, otherwise known as the Firerug Inkcap.
We checked our fungi guide and it seems the second image above is of something called ozonium, which some species of fungi produce. It’s a mat of hyphae like growth that occurs outside the substrate (deadwood in this case) and from which the fruiting body (mushroom/toadstool) grows. The problem for us now is that both Coprinellus species listed above apparently produce this ozonium. So we may have one species or two. Our best bet is to wait to see what the new mushrooms look like, as the fruiting bodies are different. Both are common.
We had never come across the term ozonium before and although we think we have seen it before we probably never considered it to be part of a fungus.
DC: 14.01.2024
Wildlife Garden 