North Kerry Waxcap Survey 2012 - the Northern Ireland Fungus Group

This species has been recorded once before in Ireland in 2004 from Greenan Mountain in
Tyrone recorded by Liz Holden during the Northern Ireland Waxcap Survey. Liz describes the
site as a poor bit of acidic sheep walk with lots of rushes and very little of interest apart from
the Geoglossum uliginosum which I have recorded as growing with Sphagnum (Liz Holden
pers comm.).
There are 5 records from Scotland and one from Wales in the FRDBI but as Johan Nitare
wrote in the Swedish Action Plan for this species, there was thoughts that the UK records may
represent a different species (Nitare, 2007). The specimen was thus sent to him he confirmed
this determination making this the first confirmed record of G.uliginosum Hakelier in Ireland.
The authority (Hakelier) is important as Johan Nitare describes that Nils Hakelier described
the species from Sweden in 1967 (Svensk Bot. Tidskr. 61: 419-424). The problem with the
name “G. uliginosum” is that Persoon also used this name for a fungus in 1796, but the sense
in which he used it is unclear. The name G.uliginosum Hakelier can be seen as a younger
homonym of G.uliginosum Pers. hence the confusion about the British records as it was not
known which description was being followed.
Brian Spooner’s key to the British Geoglossaceae excluded G.uliginosum Hakelier in 1997 as
there were no herbarium specimens from the records at that time although there is now one
specimen from Scotland from 2001 collected by Ern Emmett in Duchalton in Easterness
(http://www.fieldmycology.net/FRDBI/FRDBIrecord.asp?intGBNum=46799). Alan Silverside’s
key from 1997 lists G.uliginosum but not the authority but I did use this key along with Nordic
Macromycetes Vol 1 which lists the Hakelier species to make the identification.
This species is subject to a lot of conservation work in Sweden with its own Action Plan with a
five year budget of SEK 250,000. The main actions were site surveys, clearing of scrub and
controlled grazing preferably by cattle. This species has also recently been found in the Czech
Republic and Slovakia and a paper is in preparation reporting this. The sites there looked very
similar to Kilballylahiff with wet meadow or peat bog with Molinia caerulea, Deschampsia
cespitosa and Sphagnum spp (Viktor Kucera pers comm).
Kilballylahiff
19