Aleurodiscus wakefieldiae

Description

A recent joint foray visit to Dumfries and Galloway by Scottish recording groups turned up a bright pink encrusting (corticioid) species on beech twigs in Carstramon Wood. The collection seemed rather too pink for Peniophora incarnata, which was an early suggestion so it was taken back to the workroom for further investigation. Under the microscope it was quite clearly lacking the distinct encrusted cystidia associated with the genus Peniophora and the large, amyloid spores (white spores turning blue black in the iodine based ‘Melzer’s Reagent’) strongly suggested the genus Aleurodiscus.

Frustratingly, it just wouldn’t key out to species in the texts that we had available. It was only when I got home that further investigation turned up the species A. wakefieldiae and amazingly although rarely recorded in Scotland one of its known sites was Carstramon Wood! This species is not included in the ‘Corticiaceae of Northern Europe’, nor Ellis and Ellis ‘Fungi without gills’ nor Nordic Macromycetes volume 3 and only warrants the briefest mention in the latest book on corticioids – Fungi Europaei Vol 12. It does however figure in Stefan Buczacki’s recent publication ‘Collins Fungi Guide’. Maybe this lack of reference is one of the reasons that it is so rarely recorded.

The common name ‘Pink Disco’ is given for the bright pink colour of this fungus and the characteristic rounded patches that it forms on its woody substrate. ‘Disco’ is the name usually given to members of the ascomycota (spores inside pressurised cells and shot out into the air currents - spore shooters) that often form disc shaped structures but this particular disco is a basidiomycete (spores externally produced on the cell and relying almost entirely on gravity to disperse – spore droppers). More information about some of these terms and fungal lifestyles.