White Tubelet

A busy day of report writing, a Zoom call and a long telephone conversation left little time for a walk, so I popped up the road to Thorpe Wood to ferret about among the fallen wood. My find of the day was a log supporting a huge colony of White Tubelet Henningomyces candidus, a new species to me. 

Lawrence Millman writes:  'Unless you’re a devoted log roller, you’re unlikely to encounter H.candidus because — like its cyphelloid  colleagues — it tends to fruit under logs. Likewise, it’s only 0.5-1mm long and 0.2-0.4 mm in diameter, so you might confuse it with a generic white crust unless you happen to be gazing at it with a hand lens. But when you do find it, you’ll  doubtless be astonished, for its gregarious tubules suggest sea squirts gone terrestrial or perhaps a dish of miniature ziti. Since it’s a basidiomycete, those tubules usually will be pointing downwards rather than, like ascos, upwards, the better to release their spores.'


In the evening it was back to Zoom again. I gave a short talk to the local Wildlife Group about my natural highlights of the year and then acted as question master for our annual Christmas Wildlife quiz. It was a very festive occasion, with about fifty people taking parts. Sadly, this year, everyone had to provide their own mulled wine and mince pies!