Well at least a new record! These little brown fungi seem sometimes to escape recording. Who knows how long its been around defying those who dare to collect and record it!
I’ve spent a lot of time this month identifying last years survey specimins. All the difficult ones are left, put in a box which should be titled “small, normally dull brown and confusing.” My mentor Roy has been helping me work through them and last week he confirmed my identification of an Entoloma that has never been recorded before in Scotland. Woo hoo!
I collected it last year at Ben Lawers – a national nature reserve managed by NTS, and here she is, Entoloma vinaceum var vinaceum!
If I’d known this was going to be such an important record I’d have used a better background than my leg!!
Other news? Well I’m still trying to get some interpretation materials finalised for NTS and learning about the layers you need to work with in a large organisation (interpretation, development, design, property managers etc etc ! )
I’ve been struggling with computers trying to get my fungi data shown as dots on the map using Mapinfo a GIS programme. I thought I had it last week until most of my fungi appeared to be in the sea! The joys of technology!
Lastly I’ve been revisiting and learning about wildflowers. I’d sort of forgotten about them with my autumn and winter focus on Fungi. But I’m now fully back in the swing of things creating a wildflower ID pack for BTCV.
Spring is almost here wahay!
Oh yeah… remember the mega dairy I was writing about, well the planning proposal was rejected by the council. Good news for grasslands!
Till next time
Ali – Fungi and Wildflower apprentice