North Kerry Waxcap Survey 2012 - the Northern Ireland Fungus Group

Mullaghareirk and Mount Eagle) are very wet, low and rounded with few steep slopes and
were unlikely to be favourable.
History of mycological recording in County Kerry
Kerry is one of the better recorded counties in the Republic of Ireland for fungi but it is still not
good. Recording has also largely been centred on the Killarney area. In a snapshot of the
Fungus Records Database for the British Isles
(http://www.fieldmycology.net/FRDBI/FRDBI.asp), the primary source of fungal records for the
British Isles and a contributor to the National Biodiversity Data Centre, there were records for
only 503 different species for the vice county of North Kerry and 484 for South Kerry giving a
total of 887 species for the whole county. Compare this to 1535 species recorded for Down,
1257 for Antrim, 1091 for Wicklow and 1038 for Fermanagh.
Vice County No of Species
Down 1535
Antrim 1257
Wicklow 1091
Fermanagh 1038
Dublin 881
Offaly 708
Londonderry 676
Tyrone 646
Unallocated 632
North Kerry 503
South Kerry 484
Armagh 463
Clare & Aran Islands 441
Kildare 370
West Cork 344
Wexford 312
West Galway 246
Laois 243
West Donegal 224
East Donegal 206
Clare 200
West Mayo 196
Mid Cork 193
8
Vice County No of Species
Roscommon 186
South East Galway 176
Kilkenny 136
Sligo 133
Louth 132
Westmeath 125
Monaghan 109
Galway 105
Carlow 81
Waterford 74
Cavan 71
East Cork 34
Meath 32
North Tipperary 29
Mayo 27
Donegal 19
Leitrim 16
East Mayo 14
Limerick 12
South Tipperary 12
Longford 11
Table 2: No of species of fungi in the FRDBI in 2009
The most significant recording events in the county were three visits by the British Mycological
Society in 1936, 1946 and 1989. Very relevant to this survey was one visit to Great Blasket
recording grassland fungi by D.J. Bullock in 1975 (Bullock, 1975).
Since these recording events, there has been an increase in interest in fungi in latter years and
there are regular records from the county from Tom Harrington, Roland McHugh, Maria Cullen,
Howard Fox, Richard O’Hanlon, Northern Ireland Fungus Group members amongst others. All
these mycologists about records they held for County Kerry and thanks must go to Tom
Harrington and Jenny Seawright for providing records and information. The 2011 Bioblitz all
included some fungi records in County Kerry and thanks to the NBDC for providing these
records.