Plants and animals of Pointfield

Large (7 cm) fleshy mushroom with orange-brown cap that is slightly depressed centrally and lobed in outline with rounded, underturned edge; surface dry, smooth; wrinkling and cracking when dry. Gills cream-coloured, emarginate to weakly decurrent, dense, unbranched, with rather smooth edge. Stalk short, ovoid and thick (28 x 13 mm), whitish at top reddish-brown in the middle and white towards base with abundant hyphae; solid, with no ring. Spore print peach-pink. Spores 5.1-7.0 x 3.9-4.7 um, mean = 6.0 x 4.2, N = 21, Qav = 1.45; roughly pip-shaped but with an irregular, lumpy surface. Cheilocystidia simple cylindrical fingers, occassionally with swollen head. Pleurocystidia absent.

In grass at bottom of garden next to Bramley apple tree and bird cherry, walnut and holly trees; Growing in soil from buried wood (Oct-Nov). Also at edge of cut-leaf beech canopy close to viburnum (Jan)

Months observed