Craterium leucocephalum - John Webb
My best fungus of 2006? That’s easy, I thought, until I came to writing out my reasons for this one or that one. I was also in a quandary as to whether my choice would be acceptable as I would not be choosing a ‘fungus’. I am not submitting my favourite find, from the few ‘fungi’ I collected, but from my collection of the ‘protozoa’, that is, a myxomycete.
I then considered whether bark cultures qualified particularly as Willkommlange reticulata would be high on my list. ‘Wilko’, as I have christened it, holds particular affection as it was very stubborn, taking 94 days to develop from a yellow plasmodium to a delicate worm-like sporocarp. Perhaps the bark, collected from a dead standing trunk in the garden of a neighbour, would be sufficient reason to choose Wilko. The same bark also produced Arcyria pomiformis, and, an interesting Stemonitis.
Several others are in my ‘top of the myxo’ chart, Craterium muscorum, Diderma deplanatum, Lamproderma arcyriodes, Mucilago crustacea, and, Craterium leucocephalum. The first four listed were collected whilst on YNU forays. Craterium muscorum found, to quote Ing, 'on mossy rocks in Atlantic oak woods, ravines and by waterfalls'. The conditions in Skrikes Wood on the occasion much resembled such. The not uncommon Diderma deplanatum is included in my list, not so much because of it’s ‘macro’ characteristics, which include an interesting combination of ringed, curved, flattened, pulvinate, sessile sporangia, whose peridium is a white to cream, smooth, brittle surface on an orange base, but for it’s internal elements. With examination under the microscope a thickening of the orange base can be found which represents the columella, while the spores, dark brownish-black in direct light are a dark yellow-brown and minutely spinulose in transmitted light.
Probably the most photogenic of the list was M. crustacea, which was scattered in patches over the lawn in front of the Banqueting House of Studley Royal Estate, very much, not an Atlantic Ravine environment.
I found my final contender, Craterium leucocephalum, far from the Atlantic habitats of the West Coast, on Spurn, while foraying with East Yorkshire Fungus Group. The 0.5mm diameter by 1mm high sporangia, is brown, yet, orange-red in transmitted light stalks, supported globose to top-shaped chalices, orange to brown below, topped with glistening white calcareous granules. When first seen on the host, Achillea millefolium, C. leucocephalum presented a delicate array of unexpected colour in one of the few damp situations in an otherwise dry, hot, wind swept habitat. Where some of the sporangial jagged caps had dehisced the white/yellow pseudocolumella could be seen. This jolly splash of natural colour and form, which is neither the rarest, nor the most stubborn, nor the most photogenic myxomycete, is my favourite for 2006.
John
This page last updated 16/02/2008.