The Checklist of Shropshire Fungi 2011 - Shropshire Fungus Group

Introduction
CHECKLIST OF SHROPSHIRE FUNGI
The county of Shropshire (VC40) is large and landlocked and contains all major habitats, apart from coast
and dune. These include the uplands of the Clees, Stiperstones and Long Mynd with their associated heath
land, forested land such as the Forest of Wyre and the Mortimer Forest, the lowland bogs and meres in the
north of the county, and agricultural land scattered with small woodlands and copses. This diversity makes
Shropshire unique.
The Shropshire Fungus Group has been in existence for 18 years. (Inaugural meeting 6th December 1992.
The aim was to produce a fungus flora for the county. This aim has not yet been realised for a number of
reasons, chief amongst these are manpower and cost. The group has however collected many records by
trawling the archives, contributions from interested individuals/groups, and by field meetings. It is these
records that are published here.
The first Shropshire checklist was published in 1997. Many more records have now been added and nearly
40,000 of these have now been added to the national British Mycological Society’s database, the Fungus
Record Database for Britain and Ireland (FRDBI). During this ten year period molecular biology, i.e. DNA
analysis has been applied to fungal classification. This has brought about some changes in the position of
many species within the taxonomic framework. Some species have been moved to different genera and
some genera have been split e.g. Coprinus has been divided into Coprinus which is in Agaricaceae and
Coprinellus, Coprinopsis, and Parasola which are now in Psathyrellaceae.
The publication of the Checklist of the British and Irish Basidiomycota 2005 and its subsequent updates
have made the changes to the basidiomycota readily accessible to amateur mycologists. This book has been
used as the authority for the Basidiomycota (up to the 2010 update). There is no up-to-date corresponding
work for the remaining groups, however the FRDBI is now online and has been used as the authority for
groups other than Basidiomycota (as of May 2010).
Using both of the above the databases the fungus names in the Shropshire records have been completely
updated but a field in the database has been kept with the original recorded name so that any errors can be
readily traced. A section of these name changes has been included in this publication. Such is the speed of
change that the names and taxonomy of many species in this Checklist will already be out of date.
The Shropshire records are held on a Microsoft Access database structured in a similar manner to the
FRDBI to make the transfer of records relatively simple.
In this Checklist the information is necessarily sparse; the records in the database can contain much more
specific information on the site, (including grid reference) and details of who found the specimen and who
identified it. If a fungus is rare there may be details of who confirmed the identification and if a dried
specimen has been kept. In some instances material may be sent to Kew Royal Botanical Gardens for formal
identification, in which case a record of the Kew specimen number and the person confirming the specimen
will be kept as part of the record for that species.
The Checklist places each species within its taxonomic framework, with its associated organism or host
where recorded,(many of the older records do not contain this information and “Unknown”has been entered
for the associated organism), and the number of times it has been recorded. The taxonomic framework is
outlined with page numbers for each family. The term “incertae sedis is defined as “uncertain affinities”
which means that its lineage is not fully understood.
Some very basic analysis has been done to give an overview of fungi in Shropshire. This information is
given after the checklist. BAP = Biodiversity Action Plan. Species listed under this plan are designated for
conservation action by the UK government. See ukbap.org.uk for more details.
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