Crimped Gill

The river valley is flooded again, so I headed towards the higher land for my afternoon walk, eventually ending up at Old Sulehay Forest. The Wildlife Trust have been busy widening the main ride, and with all the recent rain the entrance to the wood was a bit of a quagmire. The interior paths weren't much better, so I spent most of my walk off piste, wandering among the trees.

Most of the toadstools are now over, but bracket and resupinate fungi are still abundant and I found many interesting species on my perambulation, including three that could possibly be new for Northamptonshire. 

The first was a clump of Fenugreek Stalkballs (see extra) on a fallen oak log. This is a predominantly southern species, here at the northern edge of its range. The second was  Hazel Waxy Crust, a very easily overlooked species that just looks like a smear of wax polish on the bare wood of Hazel, with bark curling away from its edges.

My main images shows the characteristically folded undersides of Crimped Gill, a northern species which until recently was only frequent in Scotland. However, it appears to be spreading and there are now several southern records. This is the first time I've seen any of these fungi, whose distributions have overlapped in an ancient woodland in the Midlands.