WSRBC's Dave Shorten, said: "I would have done a little dance when I found it but I didn't want to stand on it." The fungus was discovered on two leaves of a single plant, following an intensive search of hundreds of crocus plants in Westonbirt's Silkwood. Listed as a critically endangered species by the British Mycological Society, Mr Shorten said it was not only "extremely rare" but a legally protected species and "should not be picked".
"Very little is known about it - this is only the third time it has been sighted since 1938," he said. "And there have only been 27 recorded sightings of it ever in well over a century and a half and a high proportion of those records are duplicates." The smut-fungus is so called because its spores appear as a sooty black colour whilst Naked Ladies get their name from flowering in the autumn, naked without their spring leaves.
Dr Martyn Ainsworth, mycologist at Kew Gardens, said the host plant was itself classified as "near threatened" and the smut-fungus "totally dependent" on it. "The smut is on the current list as critically endangered which is just one below extinct - it's the last saloon before extinction," he said. "So this find - the third in England since the second World War - made my day."
2 comments:
As opposed to the naked man orchid, so called because its flowers look like a man, complete with willy.
And because of its configuration, it provides its own "smut"?
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