Page:VCH Norfolk 1.djvu/106

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A HISTORY OF NORFOLK instance. It was dying out there in 1876, and the last specimen was gathered in November of that year. It is noteworthy that it also died out about the same time from its original habitat at Rothiemurchus in Invernesshire. This species, however, was refound in Norfolk by Mr. C. T. M. Plowright, on sawdust, in West Briggs Wood, Wormegay, on October 29th, 1899, on which occasion Nidularia conjiuens was added to the county flora. The peculiar predilection certain species have for certain food-stuffs does not, however, preclude some curious anomalies in their place of growth : for instance, Agaricus campestris was found on a wall in Broad Street, Lynn, a few years ago, the mycelium having extended through the wall from a heap of stable manure on the other side ; Tulostoma mammosum, a very infrequent fungus with us, used to grow on some old walls in Norwich, from which however it has long disappeared, was found on a wall at Heacham in 1896, but most extraordinary to relate, it came up between the granite setts in the pavement in King Street, Lynn, a couple of years previously. Morchella esculenta we always associated with woods, but some years ago a single specimen came up in a small garden of not more than sixty square yards area in the middle of the town of Kings Lynn. Perhaps, however, the most remarkable illustration is afforded by Psilocybe bullacea, which for two or three years grew in the cranial cavity of a whale's skull at the West Norfolk Farmers Manure Company's Works at Lynn. On the other hand certain species can be gathered year after year, sometimes few in numbers sometimes many, but always within a few feet of the same spot. Volvaria taylori was first found on the sea bank. North Lynn, in July, 1 87 1, and has regularly reappeared up to the present season (1900) when specimens were brought me from the same spot. Clitocybe incilis may be found year by year on the Castle Rising road, within twenty yards of the spot in which the first specimen was gathered in 1880. Polyporus intybaceus has for the last twenty years grown inside the same hollow oak in South Wootton, but although it is always the same tree yet certain seasons the fungus fails to put in an appearance. What has been said about the peculiar affinity of the larger sapro- phytic fungi for certain food-stuffs applies equally to the smaller kinds : for example, wherever a heap of spent hops is deposited sooner or later Peziza omphaloides will appear on it ; old ivy sticks will develop Nectria sinopica ; old nettle stems Peziza fusarioides. Other instances are afforded by P. Jirma on dead oak ; P. echinophila on dead chestnut husks ; Phy- comyces nitens on waste oil ; Nectria inaurata on holly sticks. With regard to parasitic fungi the tendency among biologists at present is, if anything, to carry this too far and to make difference in host-plant an index of the specific value of the fungus with the Uredines and Ustilagineas ; this however leads us beyond our present purpose. Norfolk is rich in Uredinece ; this is shown by the fact that we have no less than twenty-two out of the twenty-eight species of the British heteroecious Pucciniae. It is interesting to remember that the heteroecious 74