Having last year made a huge step forward with one major under-recorded group at Newdigate Brickworks Nature Reserve, the moths, this autumn we started down the road with another, the fungi. 

As far as I can tell, there are almost no publicly-available records of fungi at Newdigate before 2024. I put a few through to iRecord myself last year and this, but fungi are a difficult group. 

I find flicking through guides seldom leads to a confident conclusion and I am doubtful about the AI-based identification apps, such as Seek, Obsidentify and iRecord. They are fine for some individual species, I am sure, but I have found they often give IDs with only moderate degrees of confidence, no doubt because the distinguishing features between species can often be slight and not necessarily observable to the naked eye (or camera) in the field. 

Here are photos of one colourful fungi I have seen many times at Newdigate in various locations around the Reserve (Pictures 1 and 2). It is most likely the Scarlet Elf Cup, Sarcoscypha austriaca, which is common and widespread, but it might just be the Ruby Elf Cup, Sarcoscypha coccinea, which is also widespread but scarce. They are identical to the naked eye and only separable under the microscope.

So you need human experts for proper fungi identification and that is what we got at Newdigate this autumn in the shape of the learned members of the West Weald Fungus Recording Group. The Group has been recording fungi across the Weald since 1993 at many important sites such as Ebernoe and Knepp in Sussex, Puttenham Common and Epsom Common in Surrey, but not, until this year, at Newdigate. 

You can find their 2025 schedule on their website: here. They are busy people, with two half-day field trips a week from September through to early December, and they are a friendly and engaging group. If you fancy getting into recording fungi, and want to learn from some experts, they would be good people to talk to.

With just a half day to start a fungi species list at Newdigate, the Group did very well: 61 species in total from a walk through the woodland edge along the southern perimeter of the Reserve. With most of the Reserve still to survey, and with the opportunity to survey at other times across the season, I fancy Newdigate could be hosting a few hundreds of species. Here are some pictures from the Reserve:

For those already with an interest in and knowledge of mycology, there were also a few less common species found along the way: the Bicoloured Bracket (Gloeoporus dichrous – Picture 6), the Goldleaf Shield (Pluteus romellii), the Fringed Polypore (Polyporus ciliatus – picture 7), the Bleached Brittlegill (Russula exalbicans), the Hawthorn Twiglet (Tubaria dispersa) and a surprising three colour forms of the Oldcrab Brittlegill (Russula graveolens).

A splendid start to our fungal recording at Newdigate and many more still to find, if I can tempt the West Weald Fungus Recording Group back again next year. Many thanks to them for their time and expertise this year.

Stephen Woodcock
Voluntary Warden