Back at the beginning of the month I visited Tyrrel's Wood, my local ancient wood. It's a spot I often visit looking for fungi, especially at this time of year.
During this visit I found an unfamiliar pale orange fungus growing on a fallen birch log close to the eastern edge of the wood. I photographed it and after much reading tentatively identified it as Orange Mock Oyster, Phyllotopsis nidulans. This species had ony been recorded twice before in the county so I returned to the wood to retrieve a specimen as Jeremy had kindly offered to do some microscopy on it. By the time he got it (despite me keeping it in the fridge!) it was rather shrivelled but he did manage to tease some spores out of it. And those spores confirmed my identification. The specimen is now being dried for possible DNA analysis.
One of the great things about mycology is that there are new discoveries to be made all the time and I was very happy to find this one - the first county record for 33 years!
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