RECORDS NOTEBOOK

Containing this issue: 
 
OLD BUT NEW! by Richard Fisk
BIRD’S-NEST ORCHID AT COMBS WOOD by Peter Payne
UPDATE ON CAPTAIN’S WOOD by Neil Mahler

OLD BUT NEW!

I have recently been looking at some old specimens from Arthur Mayfield’s herbarium held in the Norwich Castle Museum. These were mostly of the moss genus Drepanocladus and as expected all those labelled D. revolvens are actually D. cossonii, a segregate not recognised until fairly recently.

There were also two packets labelled D. exannulatus (now known as Warnstorfia exannulata), one from Hinderclay Fen (VC26) collected in 1920 and the other from Redgrave Fen East (VC25) collected in 1918. They have been verified as correct by the BBS referee. This species was listed (as Hypnum exannulatum) by Mayfield (1930) in his list of Suffolk bryophytes and lichens in 1930 but it is not currently accepted as occurring in the county, so they represent new vice county records. However both Hinderclay and Redgrave Fens have changed greatly since Mayfield’s time and it is unlikely that it is still there.

There were also three specimens from Knettishall Heath. They include two mosses that are also new vice county records. Pohlia annotina (collected in 1918) is rare in the county and there are no other records from VC26. Pohlia wahlenbergia(collected in 1919) is found occasionally throughout the county but this specimen predates any other confirmed record by some 75 years. The third specimen was of the liverwort Tritomeria exsectiformis a species very rare in eastern England. I had borrowed it in order to obtain the details of date (24-8-1920) and any other notes there might be on the packet.

Tritomeria exsectiformis still present after more than 75 years.

I had not been to Knettishall Heath for some time so decided to have a day away from my computer and pay it a visit, thinking it would be a good day if I could refind either of the Pohlia species. I did not succeed in this but to my astonishment I re-found the Tritomeria and with it was another liverwort Lophozia ventricosa, which is also very rare in the county and one I have not previously seen in Suffolk. There is also a specimen of this species in Mayfield’s herbarium, again from Knettishall Heath, and bearing the same date (24-8-1920) as the Tritomeria, so it is likely that he also found them growing together. Unfortunately there are insufficient details on either packet to know if it was at the same spot where I found them. The Tritomeria is a distinctive, if very small, plant with bright orange gemmae on the tips of the leaves so it is remarkable that it has managed to remain unseen at Knettishall Heath for eighty-eight years. These are also new (de-bracket) vice county records.

References

Mayfield, A. (1930). The Hepatics, Mosses and Lichens of Suffolk. Journal of the Ipswich and Dist. Nat. Hist. Soc. Vol. 1 pp 89-117 Blockeel, T.L. & Long, D. G. (1998). A Check List and Census Catalogue of British and Irish Bryophytes. British Bryological Society, Cardiff.

Richard Fisk

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BIRD’S-NEST ORCHID AT COMBS WOOD

Two plants of Bird’s-nest Orchid (Neottia nidus-avis) were spotted at the Suffolk Wildlife Trust Reserve, Combs Wood near Stowmarket on May 12th, 2008 and photographs of one of them are shown on page 17. They must have emerged fairly recently because only the flowers at the bottom of the inflorescence were open. On reporting the find to Martin Sanford of the Suffolk Biological Records Office, he mentioned that the plant had previously been found in Combs Wood in 1993, 1994, 1998 and 2007. The sporadic appearance is typical of the plant and it spends most of its life below the surface of the leaf litter. It grows above ground only to flower and produce seed. Bird’s-nest Orchid is now November 19, 2011 8:59view http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~sbrc/Neottia%20nidus-avis.htm to see its distribution).

Bird’s-nest Orchid has a uniform pale brown colour; it does not develop proper leaves and completely lacks chlorophyll. It cannot therefore make its own food and is dependent on an associated fungus to supply its needs (food and minerals), from very soon after germination to death. A full understanding of the life cycle of the plant has only emerged in the last few years. When I was at school I was taught that these types of orchids lived on saprophytic fungi – fungi that break down the dead leaves and wood of the leaf litter. The plant was even called a “saprophyte” in 1997 (Stace, C., New Flora of the British Isles). It is now thought, however, that the Bird’s-nest Orchid associates with a different class of fungi, called mycorrhizal fungi.

A mycorrhiza is a symbiotic association between a specific group of fungi and the roots of many plants, for the mutual benefit of both organisms. The most studied mycorrhizal associations are between fungus and forest trees. Unlike saprophytic fungi, a mycorrhizal fungus does not apparently break down leaf litter to make food, but instead receives up to one third of the food produced by the tree through photosynthesis. In return the fungus provides minerals and water, both taken over vast areas deep in the soil, much more than could be acquired by the trees alone. Despite losing this amount of food the trees actually live and grow better with the fungus than without. Areas planted with young trees are often deliberately inoculated with the appropriate mycorrhizal fungus for this reason.

The bird’s-nest orchid has muscled in on this happy union between fungus and tree, and takes food, minerals and water from the fungus. However the evidence suggests that the food taken was derived from a neighbouring tree that had been passed on to the fungus as part of the symbiotic deal. In the case of the two bird’snest orchids at Combs Wood the supplying tree was probably a hornbeam but other host trees can be oak, ash, or beech in other parts of the country. And in return for these essentials of life, what does the orchid give to the fungus and the tree? As far as we know, absolutely nothing.

All finds of bird’s-nest orchid should be reported to Martin Sanford (sbrc@globalnet.co.uk).

Peter Payne,
peter.i.payne AT depden-green.freeserve.co.uk

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UPDATE ON CAPTAIN’S WOOD

The year 2007 will probably go down in fungal history as one of the most disappointing for decades. With all the rain we had in early summer everything was pointing to a bumper crop, but it wasn’t to be.

Fungal groups all around the country were reporting low numbers of fruiting bodies and even blaming this on poor attendances at forays. Personally, I cannot recall seeing a single specimen of Chicken of the Woods Laetiporus sulphureus, but that’s probably down to my not searching so intensely for the Oak Polypore, Polyporus quercinus, last year.

So how did Captain’s Wood fare then? Well, I did search the reserve and check out the dead trunk on which the Oak Polypore was found in 2006 but it failed to show. This was not totally unexpected as it often misses out on one or two years before fruiting again, but with neither Beefsteak Fungus Fistulina hepatica nor Chicken of the Woods showing, things were not beginning to look good.

Hen of the Woods Grifola frondosa failed to show as did the beautiful Boletus rubellus. The two Collared Earthstar Geastrum triplex sites yielded nothing until a single fruiting body appeared at the end of December and as for the Brittle Gills Russulas and Milk Caps Lactarius spp - their numbers and variety were well down.

I could go on and on… but as well as failures there were gains. In 2003, fellow Suffolk Fungus Group member John Garrett, was shown by a friend a sample of the Hazel Powdery Mildew Phyllactinia guttata and subsequently found it growing on hazel leaves in his own garden at Otley. John took a series of excellent close up photos and produced them at the inaugural meeting of the Suffolk Fungus Group in 2006.On checking the B.M.S. fungal records database and searching the Suffolk list by Ellis & Ellis, I discovered last December that Phyllactinia guttata has not been recorded in Suffolk despite being described in Ellis & Ellis’s ‘Microfungi on Land Plants’. It is hard to tell if they simply overlooked it, or did not have time to search for it or if it just was not established in Suffolk at the time, but elsewhere in the country it is quite widespread. John’s find then, becomes the first record for Suffolk.

So off I go then to Captain’s Wood just after last Christmas to see if I could find a specimen. By the time I eventually got to the hazel coppice it was getting dark (and spooky) but luckily I was able to collect seven green leaves still attached to young stems. Back home I placed one leaf at a time under a dissecting microscope and scanned them until eventually I found three tiny dark brown spots no more than 0.25mm across on two of the leaves. I mounted one on a glass slide and placed it under the high power microscope, opened up Ellis & Ellis on page 110 plate 471, and low and behold – a second Suffolk record for Captain’s Wood! In a future article I hope to describe the life cycle of this fascinating mildew in more detail.

Other good finds were the Mothball Crust Scytinostroma portentosum (briefly mentioned in White Admiral 68), two parasitic species -the Piggyback Rose Gill Volvariella surrecta parasitizing old Clouded Agaric Clitocybe nebularis fruiting bodies (only the third known site in Suffolk, Brandon Country Park and Wenhaston church being the other two) and the scarce Powdery Piggyback Asterophora lycoperdoides growing on rotting Blackening Russula Russula nigricans.

In White Admiral Autumn 2006, I described finding the Oak Polypore in Captain’s Wood, how it was eaten by a deer and its subsequent regrowth, and finally finding it on the woodland floor having fallen or being knocked off.

The good news is that, because it was in such good condition and it would be a pity to let it just rot away, I took it home, sliced it, and put it in my airing cupboard to dry. I kept a small sample for my own expanding herbarium, and sent the remainder off to Dr Martyn Ainsworth who I’m certain has studied this rare species in the field more than anybody on the planet. Britain seems to be the stronghold for this internationally rare species.

Martyn sent part off to the National Herbarium at Kew and the rest to Professor Lynne Boddy who is working on this fungus at Cardiff University. They were especially pleased as until now all their material was from Martyn’s home patch of Windsor Park.

With the Captain’s Wood sample, Cardiff have been able to develop a “species-specific molecular probe”. Martyn tells me he believes this has been done successfully which means they will now be able tell whether Oak Polypore mycelium is present in a fragment of wood which it will contain the “fingerprint” DNA sequence even though fruit bodies are not visible. The team is now in a position to test the method on wood known to have Oak Polypore present to make sure the technique works. Then they can start testing wood from trees where OP was found long ago or wood which has never borne its fruit bodies. Martyn goes on to say it starts to get interesting at this stage “because we might find out if it establishes in young healthy trees long before they look like likely candidates for fruit body production”.

Now the bad news. Martyn confirmed my suspicion that the Oak Polypore became detached before it reached maturity, therefore no spores vital to the fungus’s survival were produced. We can only hope that the mycelium still present in the log will continue to produce more fruit bodies in the coming years or, even better, previous years spores may have successfully germinated and are slowly growing inside the dead heartwood of another oak somewhere else within the wood.

Further bad news is the fact that Honey Fungus Armillaria mellia is widespread throughout the wood and remains a serious threat to the young oaks which have been specifically planted to succeed the few remaining ancient oaks, and it doesn't stop there I'm afraid. In early January I reported to the SWT that one of only two surviving branches of an ancient oak had snapped off leaving the tree unevenly balanced over the path. I hope the Trust decides to realign the path rather than do any surgery but Health & Safety will have to be considered.

Despite misleading articles written elsewhere, Captain’s Wood (both sections), Sotterly Park and Staverton Park, remain the only places where you can see Oak Polypore in Suffolk. I plan to take the Suffolk Fungus Group to see this rare fungus sometime in July or August this year and hopefully this article will have enthused SNS members enough for them to want to see it too. If you are interested, please ring me on 07933 326528.

Neil Mahler

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