8th August 2010, CULCREUCH CASTLE, FINTRY

The foray was blessed with glorious sunshine and some very special fungi. It was a great pleasure to welcome two of our founder members on their first foray with us: Dave Genney and Jenny Park.

We were hoping to see some of the oakwood fungi that had manifest themselves during 2009, particularly Russula pseudointegra and R. farinipes and we were not to be disappointed. The latter, indeed, was one of the first species to be encountered, and we found it in several localities throughout the day. The two star finds of the morning, however, were both made by Jenny: one was an unfamiliar milk-cap which would later be identified independently by Graeme Walker and me as Lactarius azonites, while the other, a beautiful Amanita with a marginally striate tawny cap bearing grey velar remnants and a beautiful grey stem with a pronounced snakeskin pattern and oblique ridges towards the base instead of a volval bag was declared by me to be Amanita ceciliae (although Dave's superior scientific discipline refused to allow him to discount A. submembranacea!) (photo above). The matter will finally be refereed by Graeme who is in possession of the voucher material, but in either case it is a splendid find.

Lunch was enjoyed outdoors at the castle pub/restaurant (I had a very good sirloin steak!) and Hopkirk was duly toasted, albeit with shandy, coffee and diet coke - I hope the great man is not spinning in his grave...

I feel sorry for those who had to leave the foray at this point, as they missed an afternoon session which produced a large number of records, among them some absolute stoaters! As well as two further finds of Amanita ceciliae/submembranacea the Russula pseudointegra duly turned up although there were less than twenty sporocarps in an area which had produced hundreds last year. Graeme was on fire and came up with a succession of excellent discoveries, including a beautiful tiny brown and grey eyelash fungus - Trichophaea woolhopeia - (a tribute to the Woolhope Club from which the BMS was founded) growing on bare soil amongst Dog's Mercury, and an exciting bolete, which I would probably have dismissed as Boletus luridiformis var. luridiformis but he recognized as different, and tentatively identified as B. queletii. He took three specimens home and carried out a Melzer's test on them; their rapid positi

ve reaction confirmed his suspicion! The Trichophaea is only the fifth Scottish record on the FRDBI, with 3 of the previous finds from Sutherland and one from Roxburgh in the borders. Boletus queletii was thought not to occur in Scotland until as recently as 1997, and there are at present only 6 Scottish records on the FRDBI, including one from Graeme himself at Chatelherault, Lanarkshire in 2003.For my part I was not entirely idle, and came up with Russula risigallina, Amanita battarrae, Asterophora parasitica (a lovely display growing on a decomposing cap of Russula delica) and, with virtually the last find of the day, the most exquisite Pluteus I have ever seen: its pretty date-brown cap contrasting with its bright golden stem which made identification easy - P. romellii.

All in all we had a cracking good day out, the best CAFG foray so far. It served to underline some points made in one of our online discussions earlier in the year - if you want to find rare "southern" Boletus and Amanita species in Scotland you have to get out and about early in the season while it is still warm. To Hopkirk!

(Bottom photo: Mycena acicula)