On Saturday 25/10 I met up with John Gavaghan a knowledgeable Fungi expert at Raw Nook LNR.
He had kindly agreed to come along and do some fungi survey work as he is a lot more knowledgeable of the subject than I am.
Thankfully the weather was fine and dry but rather cold.
It wasn’t long before we had found a rather large group of Clouded Funnels and some Wood Blewits which aren’t that common at Raw Nook in the wooded area within the meadow.
We left that area and turn right after the kissing gate when I spotted an Earthstar fungi which I had not seen before.
John quickly ID it as a Collard Earthstar Geastrum triplex.
Whilst I was over the moon as it was a new species for the reserve he was also very happy as this was the first time he had seen the species this year!!
Within a foot or so we found a further 3 Collard Earthstar growing on the left side of the path.
As we moved through the site John ID more and more fungi including a group of Sulphur Knights by the pond and another site first a lovely Wood Pinkgill.
I then took John to the Oaks at the top of the site which is also good for fungi.
Here we found lots of ‘Blusher fungi’ above with many just starting to form.
John ID the Butter Cap fungi opposite only the second record for Raw Nook. In this area we also found at least 40-50 Oakbug Milkcaps and 3 Purple Brittlegill fungi which is not the common at the site.
A total of 26 were identified and John confirmed that a fungi he had taken away for further investigation turned out to be a Tawny Funnel which was the third new species for the site.
A big thankyou to John for all his ID skills and help increasing our fungi species list to 136.
