XVIII.

FAUNA AND FLORA OF NORFOLK.

(ADDITIONS TO PART III.)

FUNGI.

BY CHARLES B. PLOWRIGHT, M.R.C.S.

Read 25th March, 1884.

IN October, 1872,* I had the honour of submitting to the Society a list of Fungi, which had been recorded from various parts of the county. This list embraced upwards of eight hundred species. In the twelve years which have since then elapsed, very nearly seven hundred species have been found, new to the county. Many of these are of great interest and rarity, several not having occurred elsewhere in Britain. For instance, two magnificent species, Boletus sulphureus and Helvella infula have been found at Brandon, growing, both of them, upon sawdust. Neither of these Fungi have as yet been met with elsewhere in England, nor in Great Britain, except at one station in the north of Scotland (Rothiemurchus). Boletus sulphureus was found some years ago by my friend the Rev. Dr. Keith, growing upon the immense heaps of saw dust at the last named place. A few years afterwards (November, 1876) I was fortunate in finding two or three specimens at Brandon. This circumstance, curious enough in itself, would hardly have made much impression upon my mind, had it not happened that in 1879 I visited Rothiemurchus, partly with the view of again gathering the Boletus, which had ceased to appear at Brandon. Dr. Keith, however, informed me that it had disappeared as completely from Rothiemurchus as it had done from Norfolk. During my excursions, however, I was rewarded

* Trans. Norfolk and Norwich Nat. Soc. vol. ii. (1872-73), pp. 28-78. + Ibid. vol. ii. (1876–77), p. 260.

by gathering a few small specimens of Helvella infula, a fungus which had never before been found in Great Britain. This was

in the month of September. After my return home I visited Brandon, in November, and there found numerous magnificent specimens of the Helvella; some of them were eight or ten inches in height. Separated as these two localities are by some six hundred miles from each other, it is very remarkable that they should simultaneously produce two such rare species. Upon inquiry it appears that when the Eastern Counties Railway was first constructed, a ship load of fir wood was brought to Lynn from the Forest of Rothiemurchus, and used principally for sleepers. The probability is, that the mycelium of these fungi was thus imported into the county. Our knowledge of the life. history of the larger fungi is very meagre, but it is a matter of common observation amongst mycologists that while the commoner species of Agarics recur annually in exactly the same spot, yet with many of the rarer species this annual recurrence does not take place. In our country fungologists are now by no means weak in point of numbers, and, moreover, they are all enthusiasts, more or less. Yet nowhere else have these two fungi-which are exceptionally large in size, and otherwise such striking plants, as not easy to be overlooked-been found except at the two places above mentioned. It is worth remarking further, that when they first appeared they were very abundant in point of numbers, but that after recurring two or three years they became each year less numerous, and finally disappeared. Doubtless they will reappear, either here or elsewhere. What becomes of them in the meantime is a question which can be more easily speculated upon than solved. The appearance of rare fungi at long intervals is further illustrated by the magnificent Geaster coliformis, which, after nearly a century's absence from the county, was refound at Grimstone in 1880. Verpa digitaliformis occurred at North Wootton in 1871, and although I visited the spot annually for several years, I was never able to meet with it again. In 1875, however, it occurred in great abundance at Terrington St. Clement's; but, although I have rigorously examined this habitat year after year, it has never, up to the present time, reappeared. That exceedingly rare Fungus, Cordyceps capitata, that Sowerby had sent to him from near Holt, towards the end of the last century, which grows parasitically

upon one of the Truffles (Elaphomyces granulatus) has been refound near Mattishall by the Rev. Canon Du Port.

In the accompanying list the arrangement is, mainly, that employed by Dr. Cooke in his 'Hand-book of British Fungi.' This valuable work, to which British Mycology owes so much, is now out of print. In the thirteen years which have passed since it was published, much light has been thrown upon the life history of fungi generally; facts that were then startling and novel have been substantiated by numerous observers. Notably is this the case with our knowledge of the physiology of the Uredines, hence it has been absolutely necessary to modify the arrangement of the genera and species of this group. The nomenclature adopted is that employed by Dr. G. Winter in his new edition of Rabenhorst's 'Kryptogamen Flora.' The Pyrenomycetes have been arranged after the method of Professor Saccardo in his 'Sylloge Fungorum.' Of this group alone, somewhere between six and seven thousand species have been described from various parts of the world. It is not to be wondered that botanists, who make these particular fungi their special study, should feel grateful to Professor Saccardo for his valuable work in which the descriptions of more than six thousand are collected and arranged. To Mr. Frank Norgate and to Mr. J. Harvey Bloome my thanks are due for the help they have given me in the work of compiling this list. The Rev. Canon Du Port has, during the past four or five years, most industriously studied the Hymenonyces, and to his labours the large increase of these fungi, as denizens of Norfolk, is mainly due.