Saturday 16 March 2019

A resolution bites the dust


My friends Lynda and Damien have a fine garden and I always enjoy a stroll around to see what is in flower. Today there was a host of Hellebores in bloom but what really caught my eye was a fungus growing on a wooden bench.

My New Year's Resolution was to avoid fungi, but I'm afraid that plan went out of the window, mainly because it was a rather attractive species unfamiliar to me.

Once home I spent some time narrowing down the possibilities and decided that it was probably the species known as the Rusty-gilled Polypore, Gloeophyllum sepiarium.  Not being a mycologist I posted the picture on Facebook and people were kind enough to confirm this for me.


Gloeophyllum sepiarium on a garden bench. Byfield, Northants.
16 March, 2019
Apparently it is a widespread species for it is frequently found in North America, where it occurs in timber yards on sawn conifer wood. The fruiting body of the fungus seems to be slightly glistening and in fact 'Gloeophyllum' means 'with sticky or glutinous leaves'.

Also today (but not in Lynda's garden) Celandines, Ficaria verna, were in flower. In older books this pretty plant is called Ranunculus ficaria, the name-change only recently being adopted - although the botanist Hudson originally proposed this name way back in 1762.

Celandines in flower near Byfield, Northants. 16 March, 2019

No comments:

Post a Comment