Puffballs, ferns & littler things

The mild, and now damp, weather is extending the fungus season.

Today in Greenden Wood we found a fine clump of the stump puffball (Lycoperdon pyriforme) growing, believe it or not, on an old stump.  These fruit bodies are good to eat so long as they are still white inside, but we left them where they were.

A larger member of the same genus, the common puffball (Lycoperdon perlatum) was found in several places.  It is also good to eat and one source says it used to be used as a painkiller in dentistry, but I can find no further information on that.

On a rather smaller scale were some tiny black rat's dirt fungal fruiting bodies  (hysterothecia) growing on the wood of a honeysuckle twig.

The twig was lying on the ground and the tiny microfungi were confined to a small area where the bark had exposed the wood underneath.  They turned out to be Hysterobrevium mori, not previously recorded from East Sussex.

Identifying things like this is not easy.  In this case I was able to get close by looking at pictures in a book on microfungi.  However, since there were several rather similar species it was necessary to crush a few of them up to get the ascospores out then examine them under a high powered microscope.

Fiddly though this may be, it is always gratifying when one gets a good fit and a new name.  The specific name 'mori' means 'of the mulberry' as in the scientific name of the silkworm, Bombyx mori, whose caterpillars eat mulberry leaves.  Maybe this fungus was first found on mulberry wood, but I fancy the name is because the ascospores look rather like mulberries.

Greenden Wood retains its wonderful stands of hard fern (Blechnum spicant) where the chestnut coppice is dying back and letting in more light.  Below is a fine display of the spore bearing fronds.

I have not come across any special uses for this fern in the UK, but among the indigenous people of western Canada it has a reputation for curing internal cancers and giving relief to skin sores.  These people say that deer rub the antler stubs on these plants when their antlers break off.

Cattle and toadstools

Yesterday I went to see the cows (everyone seems to call them 'cows' regardless of their sex) for the first time.  They are healthy-looking, friendly beasts of the Sussex breed.  These animals are a Wealden variety descended from the draught oxen of the past.  They are hardy, stocky animals with that characteristic dark red colour and were once reckoned to be among the finest cattle in England (and we think they still are).

In the picture above they are standing at the top of The Hoathes, one of the fields that was used for rough grazing in the past and which was a larch plantation until the end of 2009.

On my way back after an hour's walk they were standing together as though dreaming in the middle of a field half a mile away.  Maybe they were listening to the spirits of their ancestors.

For late November the day was exceptionally warm and there are still many fading leaves on the trees.

The shallow indentation above with the bank to the left is part of the old lane that led from Austford Farm to Brede High Farm and unused for maybe 200 years.

Here and elsewhere there are many fungi enjoying the dampness and the unseasonal warmth. The butter cap (Collybia butyracea), named for its greasy feel, has popped up everywhere

while some of the pine stumps are sporting orange yellow stagshorns (Calocera viscosa) like the hackles worn on some soldiers' hats.

Most interesting of all was a fine crop of the redlead roundhead (Leratiomyces ceres - formerly Stropharia aurantiaca) on the remains of the woodchip pile at the old woodyard.

This species was first recorded in Britain in 1957 and has since spread widely on the woodchip habitat, though there are only a few other Sussex records.

It is not alone.  Many other species are turning up on woodchip. several from much warmer parts of the world.  It is thought that the warmth of the woodchip itself as it decomposes gives them a head start and that maybe our increasingly milder climate allows them to increase and spread.

Finally I came across this spooky little familiar on the ground in The Hoathes - a fawn (faun) man rather than a green man.  What could have caused it I wondered, then remembered the old phantoms of which the faraway cows were dreaming.

Pears from the past

Like most fruit trees our Beurre Bedford pear down our  garden in Sedlescombe has fruited well this year.  This is fairly surprising as it is a self-sterile variety, though I expect there are plenty of potential pollinators around.

The tree is a graft I made from one of the old pear trees that used to grow in the orchard at Austford Farm in Brede High Woods.  The fruit above are a bit battered because they grow too far up for me to reach, so we have to gather windfalls.

The variety was first recorded in 1902 and was identified by the fruit naming service of the Royal Horticultural Society.  It was raised by Laxton's of Bedford.

I often reflect on how the people who used to live at this long demolished farm might have selected and grown these pears and other fruit and I think of our tree as a bit of living archaeology.

In 1927 the celebrated Irish-born gardener and writer William Robinson said "Beurre Bedford is superior in quality to many October pears and, being a strong grower and free cropper, it should soon become widely grown."

Fences and stinkhorns

On one of the wettest and windiest of September days we walked round the recently cleared areas of the old Austford farm looking at the new fences built to contain the cattle that will be arriving soon.

The bottom strand of the three wires is not barbed, so people's dogs will be able to go to and fro the fences without injury.

Near the north west corner of Holman Wood Field we found a fine stinkhorn fungus, Phallus impudicus, at the woodland edge.  It was in almost perfect condition (rare for this species) and attended by ants, one of which can be seen descending the stem (below), as well as by the usual carrion-loving flies.

In the Mushroom Book by Nina Marshall (1923) there is a wonderfully Scott Fitzgerald style description of the stinkhorn's unmistakable smell: "An overpowering fetid odour suddenly evident upon the premises has many times filled with consternation the guests at summer resorts, causing among them much speculation, with suggestions of bad sewerage, and carelessness on the part of their host, together with other comments equally disastrous to the reputation of the place."

W. C. Radley, a doctor from South Devon, wrote enthusiastically in The Lancet in 1841 about the medicinal powers of dried and powdered stinkhorn which, he claimed, cured dropsy.  He also said it had a power of "allaying pain equal to morphine".  Although he was clearly convinced, no one else appears to have followed his lead.

Xysticus & Agroeca spiders

The growing number of insects in the newly cleared area around the former Austford Farm is providing plenty of food for spiders and other insectivorous creatures.

Xysticus cristatus (below) is one of the crab spiders that conceals itself in flower heads waiting for an insect to alight before grabbing it.

It is rather like going to the pub and having a giant cannibal spring up from behind the bar and start sucking your blood just as you settle down for your pint.

The unprepossessing blob of mud on a rush stem below is a completed egg case of one of the fairy-lamp-spiders, Agroeca proxima or A. brunnea.

I wrote about this in the Easter eggs entry for 12 April 2009 and posted a photo that shows the spider's egg case before she covers it with mud.  This outer coating is, of course, a good camouflage, or rather deception, as it looks just like a blob of mud thrown up by a passing cart or galloping animal.

The casing is resistant to rain as the mud is strengthened by the spider's silk like fibre reinforced concrete or the addition of straw to mud bricks in medieval times.

Naturalist Edward Connold wrote in his Gleanings from the Fields of Nature (1909) that he first noticed these mud-plastered cocoons in 1893 when he found them in large numbers "in an open wood near Hastings."  I wonder if this was Brede High Wood.

He also wondered about the considerable effort it must take the spider to first weave the egg cocoon and then transport wet mud up a rush or grass stalk.  Other spiders do not go to such great lengths to protect their egg cocoons, yet Agroeca's efforts do not seem to result in a significantly larger number of members of the two species.  Maybe there was a situation in the dim and distant past when a mud-covered egg case did give it some slight advantage over their competitors and the ability to create these in their present form was naturally selected.

A note on dodder, Cuscuta epithymum

Common dodder, Cuscuta epithymum, is a low-growing parasitic plant with red, thread-like stems and pink flowers in summer. It was first recorded in Brede High Woods in 1994 in a small open area (TQ790202) that is part of what was known in pre-reservoir days, i.e. before 1930, as The Hothes (now part of Compartment 4b), indicating a rough grazing area of gorse and heath. It is currently normally referred to as ‘Sedlescombe Heath’. Dodder was parasitic on heather, Calluna vulgaris, here, but will also use a wide range of other plants as host, such as wood sage, bracken, bramble and various grasses.  It has even been found on lousewort, Pedicularis sylvestris, which is itself partially parasitic.

It was described as common in Sussex by Arnold in 1887, but had become relatively scarce by the time Hall’s Sussex Plant Atlas was published in 1980. Currently its main East Sussex locations apart from Brede High Woods are Ashdown Forest, Chailey Common and Hastings Country Park and it was also widespread on the Downs in the past, but it continues to be a generally declining plant. The Online Atlas of the British and Irish Flora says “The loss of lowland heath, ploughing of chalk downlands, and an increase in scrub have caused a decline in this species since 1930.”  Whilst it is still locally abundant in southern England, distribution maps suggest a continuing substantial decline.

In the early years of the 21^st century it disappeared from its only known location in Brede High Woods, but another patch was discovered in 2009 some 200 metres north of the original site. Following clearance of conifers and broadleaves from formerly open areas in late 2009 it appeared in some abundance in 2011, particularly in the southern part of 4b that had been an oak plantation and it was also found in Compartment 5a where there had been dense conifer cover for many years.

It is well known that seed can retain viability under unfavourable conditions for many years (Meulebrouck, 2009) and it will often, though not always, colonise fire sites in the heathlands where it grows (Rich et al., 1996).

Dodder only flourishes in the early successional stages of heathland and other habitats and management is important in ensuring its long-term survival. Meulebrouck (2009) recommends for Belgian heathlands   “a combination of cyclical management by mowing, burning and shallow turf cutting” with seven- or ten-year management cycles on patches containing dodder, a technique that can be successful even at small scales.

Meulebrouck further points out that livestock grazing is an important management measure for lowland heaths. The positive effect of extensive grazing on both the presence of dodder populations and the long-term metapopulation viability, indicates that grazing is a beneficial and valuable conservation tool for dry heathlands. A mosaic of pioneer phase patches of heathland regeneration are not only important for dodder, but for other plants and their associated faunas that flourish in bare, or thinly vegetated, open habitats.

REFERENCES

Arnold, F. H. (1887) Sussex Flora. Hamilton, Adams & Co, London

BSBI et al. (2011) Online Atlas of the British and Irish Flora. http://www.brc.ac.uk/plantatlas/index.php?q=plant/cuscuta-epithymum

Meulebrouck, Klaar (2009) Distribution, demography and metapopulation dynamics of Cuscuta epithymum in managed heathland. Doctoral thesis for the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. http://dfwm.ugent.be/lavobo/docs/Doctoraten/Klaar_Meulebrouck_doctoraat.pdf

Rich, T., Donovan, P., Harmes, P., Knapp, A., Marrable, C., McFarlane, M., Muggeridge, M., Nicholson, R., Reader, M., Reader, P., Rich, E. & White, P. (1996) Flora of Ashdown Forest. Sussex Botanical Recording Society.

Cricket and leaf mine

I was photographing the mine of the agromyzid fly Agromyza flaviceps in a leaf of hop by the footpath east of the old Austford Farm when a speckled bush-cricket (Leptophyes punctatissima) must have made a runner beneath the lens.

I have to confess I did not even notice it until I got home and downloaded the picture.