Volume 12, Part 4, November 1998

•Price: £ 6.00 or £ 6.50 p ost paid

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Keys to Fungi on Dung

Obtainab le from: -

T he BM S Librarian

Valerie Barkham

T he Herbar ium

Royal Botan ic Gardens

Kew, RI CHMOND

Surrey T W9 3AE

Patrick Leonard

Galicia. We were lucky enough to see Gyroporusamophila, first described from this site byMarisa Castro and Luis Friere. There were goodspecimens of Amanita gracilior in the dunes.Mycena seynii was everywhere, growing out oflast year's cones still suspended on the trees.The sun shone and a number of the party tooktime off to swim in the Atlantic, at its warmestin late October.

Marisa Castro, who organized the foray local-ly, was able to get away from her Universityduties and join us for our farewell. Luis Friere,the President of the Galician MycologicalSociety, closed the proceedings with a movingspeech about the links between Galicia and theUK. Sadly Luis, who had done more than any-one to put mycology on the map in this part ofSpain, died a few weeks after our visit.

Our lasting memories of Galicia will be of aninteresting mycological area with many unspoilthabitats, of a rich and distinctive culture, and ofsome warm and lasting friends. A report of theforay and a full list of the 1098 records made dur-ing the BMS visit to Spain and Portugal in 1997is available from the BMS Library.

British Mycological Society Overseas Foray - Galicia

The 1997 overseas foray was held in Tuy, a smallfortified town on the banks of the River Minho inGalicia. Twenty seven BMS members from fivecountries joined the eight members of theGalician Mycological Society for a splendidlywarm week in late October. Before the coachhad arrived bringing the main party from the air-port, the car drivers had a list of five speciesfound on the very small lawn next to the hotelcar park. This included Tulostoma cyclophorum.To make up for their late start the coach partyretired to a tapas bar and consumed large quan-tities of stewed octopus and tortillas, washeddown with Galician wine.

The high altitude oak forests we visited werevery like those of western Britain, but at lowerlevels they contained some of the mediterraneanoaks and tree heathers. Many of the fungi weencountered were familiar; Russula sororia andMycena pura were common in the Touton woods,others such as Russula caerulea and Mycena sey-nesii were much more southern in character.

A visit to one of the wilder heathlands atPortella de Foxo produced some spectacular rus-sulas and Gyroporus cyanescens. Careful inspec-tion of wild horse dung was repaid by specimensof Poronia punctata along with a wide range ofother coprophilous fungi.

Our hosts were wonderfully hospitable.Antonio Prunell and Machifio dragged a wonder-ful Galician picnic to the top of a remote pathwhere we sat amongst groves of Boletus edulis,eating empanadas in the sunshine. PatriciaComesafia and Ana Solifio, two postgraduatesfrom the University of Vigo who accompanied usthroughout the foray, even managed to teachWill Garforth a tongue twister in Gallego. Willbecame an instant hit when he later recited thepoem on Galician television during the coverageof our foray. The hotel opened up their kitchensfor Margaret Kelly to produce an excellentBoletus Ii la inglesa.

Our visit to the Penedes Geres National Parkin Portugal was spectacular. A huge thunder-storm cut visibility to a few yards, flooded roads,and cut off the electricity at the National Parkvisitor centre where we were to assemble.Matters were not helped by the foray organizerissuing instructions to drive the wrong way up aone way street! The few brave forayers who ven-tured into the forests were rewarded with someinteresting fmds which included some good spec-imens of Pisolithus tinctorius.

The last full day of the foray was spent atPraia de Barra, a delightful beach and dune sitewhich is the best-recorded site for fungi in