Yet another obscure waxcap

I found this a fair distance away from here on the lower slopes of the Sugar Loaf near Abergavenny but decided to include it in the blog because my blog focus has dwindled to just waxcaps at the moment. It is a little recorded variety of the Snowy Waxcap namely Hygrocybe virginea var fuscescens. It is distingushed from the normal Snowy Waxcap by the central brown spot and the brown striations.

...and now the Toasted Waxcap

Found in a field on the English side of the Wye, the rarely recorded Toasted Waxcap (Hygrocybe colemanniana). I had a feeling that it was H colemanniana as soon as I spotted it but it took some detailed examination from an expert to confirm the id. What a great waxcap season it has been.

Goblet Waxcap - New Species (for me) at New Grove

I am not sure I would have nailed this ID but some work with the microscope by an expert and we know it is Hygrocybe cantherellus - obvious from the pictures and description in the book once you know the answer. That makes around 25 waxcap species seen this year which is a good proportion of the species that could be found in this area.

The Honey Waxcap

Another delightful new waxcap here at The Beeches -smells of honey when drying hence the Honey Waxcap (Hygrocybe reedii). It also seems to me to have a characteristic colouring a certain shade of bright vivid orange that I haven't seen on other waxcaps. Some animal took away the bigger example that I was going to photograph so here's a new group coming through.

The Splendid Waxcap

Unbelievably I stumbled over another new waxcap in my East Field yesterday the Splendid Waxcap (Hygrocybe splendissima). At first I thought it was the Crimson Waxcap (Hygrocybe punicea) but I realised that features were not quite right for H punicea and that it must be H splendissima which I had never seen before. It has a 'dry and irregularly compressed stem' and a dry cap which are two of the features that distinguish it from H punicea as well as a different colour of the cap.

And another.......

This time it is Hygrocybe irrigata - the Slimy Waxcap. A lovely mixture of slimy browns and greys with subtle grey gills. Why all these new waxcaps are appearing here is a mystery to me. Of course it might be the results of my sympathetic management but it is more likely that it is either the particular weather conditions or that I hadn't spotted these fungi before. With many of them you have to be patrolling daily - no sooner do they spring up then they get nobbled by animals or parisitized by other fungi - or they just finish their fruiting job really quickly.

A waxcap a day....

I keep falling over new waxcap species every time I venture outside. Here's a surprise - the rarely recorded Hygrocybe ingrata (no English name) which has appeared in two of the fields. It is not on the Monmouthshire fungi list apparently. I'm confident of the ID but the waxcap bible (Boertmann) has it as between 20 and 60mm cap size whereas 2 of the three I found were 70mm. I'll have to let him know!

Waxcap heaven

This is another of the newly identified waxcaps here at Waxcap Central. This is the Persistent Waxcap, now known as Hygrocybe acutoconica var acutoconica. I'm going to have to add up the number of species shortly to see if we have passed from a site of regional importance to one of national importance. I guess the reality is that most sites undercount the number of species due to identification difficulties or just the lack of someone to patrol every day looking for waxcaps!