Small red spherical fungus.

Hi, and welcome to UK Fungi.

This has the general looks of a small example of Tubulifera arachnoidea, which is a myxomycete (Slime Mould).

But I would have expected that to be quite soft at this stage, rather than rough, dry, and slightly resilient as you mention?

Regards,

Mike.

Are you sure it’s not Tubifera ferruginosa . looks a bit Raspberryish but difficult to determine from the fuzzy picture as to what the shape of the tips is.

Ironic given the most likely ones you’ll see are

1 dog vomit which is a large yellow mass

2 false puffball which is a pearly white blob on rotting trunks with brown marks if the outer layer is damaged

3 Wolfs milk which are small, though quite large for slime moulds, spheres of varying colours through brown, pink , orange etc

I’ve seen raspberry a couple of times, stemmed types like stemonitis a couple of times and one of the fanned variety only once.

Are you sure it’s not Tubifera ferruginosa . . . .

Same thing! – Tubifera ferruginosa was the previous name for Tubulifera arachnoidea

The only other potential suspect – which would fit the provided “rough, dry, and slightly resilient” description better, would be Illiosporiopsis christiansenii, which is a small bright pink lichenecolous fungus (i.e grows directly on lichens – particularly Physcia species) although at 8mm diameter, your example would be extremely large for an Illiosporiopsis christiansenii fruitbody. (Usually only up to about 2mm max.)

Other than those two suggestions, I’m at a loss as to what it could be.

PS – I’m quite some distance away from Derwentwater.

Regards,

Mike.

It’s the perfect colour for Illosporiopsis christiansenii but the substrate is wrong. What is it? It looks a like washed-out pleurocarpus moss. And as Mike says it’s far too big – see: http://www.ascofrance.com/search_recolte/3333” class=”bbcode_url”>http://www.ascofrance.com/search_recolte/3333

With regard to English names, one big problem is that they reverse the very useful Linnaean system – so if you list Agaricus langei by scientific name it becomes a member of a group called “Agaricus” a chance to compare it with other Agaricus species which are all closely related. If you list it by English name what does that tell you? If you list it by “scaly” you get fungi which are not in any way related. OK “scaly wood mushroom” – what does that tell you? It’s a mushroom . . . we kind of worked that out – it’s a wood mushroom . . . so a mushroom that grows in woods, that narrows it down 🙄 It’s a scaly mushroom, but “scaly appears all over the place in these English names – Pholiota species are “scaly caps” apparently; but only 7 Pholiota species appear in the list as “scaly caps” so where does that leave the other 35 or so Pholiota species without an English name?

These English names only confuse things, I would contend that they do not actually make things easier for beginners, they imply that naming a fungus, especially an agaric is always easy. They were designed to make things easier for politicians and other decision makers to engage with in order that fungi might play a part in those decisions. If anyone has any information about how successful that has been I would be interested.

Fungi are crucial to the running of the planet – they were key in life moving from the oceans to dry land. We need to get that message across rather than worry about creating more names for them.

rant over

Chris