Moss-loving fungus

After yesterday's celebration it was back to work today - our last visit to Whitemoor, the end of an era, as we've been visiting the site regularly since 2003. Our standard monitoring visits haves been in May and July, but this year we're trying to do a more complete inventory, so have visited at fairly regular intervals over the season. Pete and Chris were surveying aquatic invertebrates and I had a walk round to add any extra plant species. There were also plenty of fungi - some of which were identifiable - others will forever remain a mystery to me.

This tiny Orange Mosscap Rickenella fibula, whose cap was less than one centimetre wide, was possibly the cutest. As its name suggests it always grows along moss, in this case Juniper Haircap Polytrichum juniperinum, and may well be parasitic on it. In the Peterborough area its particularly characteristic of brownfield sites, whose infertile soils often support extensive areas of moss-dominated vegetation.