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Master W Minter, Dr E Mordue, Mr T Palmer, Mrs C Palmer, Dr A Silverside,Dr R Watling.

AcknowledgementsThanks to Paul Cannon for organising the foray , to Aberdeen University forco-operation and assistance with the accommodation, to the various landownersfor permission to collect on their property, especially the Royal Society forthe Protection of Birds, the Nature Conservancy Council and the ForestryCommission, and lastly to our foreign visitors for their enthusiasm in comingalong on our foray.

David Minter

SON OF TRUFFLE HUNT

Wotton-Under-Edge, 16-18 August 1985

To the sound of slurping mud under landrover wheels,To the struggle of erecting the marquee,To the smell of mushrooms cooking in ouzo,To the greetings of enthusiastic truffle hunters, veteran and new,We arrived!

Son of Truffle Hunt saw the BMS trufflers out in force again with our oftenimitated (never duplicated) gatherings under the benign and efficient organisa-tion of Jane Ingham who has done more than most to revive the interest inBritish truffles. Although wetter than last year - we slept the first night tothe sound of water running over the ground beneath our tents - the samesy stem of camping and a grand marquee in which to gather for meals seemedto work as well as ever. This meeting is rapidly becoming the headquarters of thegastronomic wing of the Society, and on the first evening we were treated togiant mushrooms gently fried with garlic and thyme, and courgettes tossed inouzo!

Our first day's hunting revealed two specimens of Tuber aestivum and anumber of smaller truffles including T. puberulum lT, borschii and T. foetidum,One specimen of T. aestivum was found at the end of the morning on an up-hillclimb out of Stinchcombe Woods, the other turned up in the afternoon nearDursley again whilst we were on an up-hill climb towards the end of search. Theday ended back at the campsite around barbecue and bar, with congratulationsto (and envy of) the successful hunter who had found two of the three examplesof T. aestivum ,

Day two of the hunt, and off to Twinbarrow Woods, the site of all ourtriumphs in 1984. We went directly to the best site of last year and, after muchdesultory scraping, found one or two minute truffles of Balsamia fragiformis .The call of lunch was growing stronger, and so was the drizzle , while our hopeswere ebbing as we viewed the almost empty baskets , then after an hour (whichseemed an age), the cry of 'truffle!' was again heard as a splendid specimen ofT. aestivum was seen just peering out of the soil, half covered by leaf litter in amoist site near the end of the wood, and some yards from last year's best place.One hunter, then two, then three, quickly gathered, shortly followed by fortyup-turned mycologists all busily scraping. It was fantastic! Within the nexthalf-hour a total of 37 specimens of T. aestivum had been found .

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To the click of cameras,To the well-earned lunch,To the cries of goodbye and the plans for next year,To the long journey home,We departed!

Mary and Peter Smith

Postscript: Tuber aestivum is edible and good. It has a subtle and nutty flavoureaten either in a cream sauce accompanying chicken or gently fried in butter. Analternative, of course, is the CMI herbarium ...

DAY FORAY REPORTS

BMS DAY FORAY

Point of Air, Clwyd 5 October 1985A small party of local naturalists and students gathered on a damp and windymorning to revisit the dunes which were well explored during the 1985 AutumnForay. Only thirty-eight species of fungi were found but they included Cy athusstereoreus in a second British locality and a powdery mildew on Evening Prim-rose, Erysiphe howeana , which is new to the British list. In addition, an Ento-mophthora, probably coleopterorum, was found on a weevil.

Bruce Ing

REPORTS FROM OTHER SOCIETIES

Birmingham Natural History SocietyThe 1985 season was notable for the virtual absence of the larger autumnagarics, a feature apparently common to other parts of, at any rate, southernBritain.

An early foray on 5 May at Hampton Wood, near Warwick produced someof the larger spring discomycetes, namely Disciotis venosa, Mitrophora semili-bera and Verpa conica. A visit was made after this foray to the grounds of thenew offices of the National Farmers Insurance Group, just outside Stratford-on-Avon, where an interesting phenomenon had been reported. Extensive shrubborders round the car parks had been dressed with shredded bark with Which,apparently, the spores of Morels had been introduced. These had appeared intheir hundreds, mostly Morchella elata but in parts M. esculenta and with a smallgroup of Verpa conica. It is interesting that a similar occurrence had been re-ported (in the Foray Programme of August 1985) from the campus of theUniversity of Kent, though only 30 specimens had been seen there comparedwith numbers approaching 1,000 at Stratford. A foray at Bannerley Wood on25 August produced little of note, though the discomycete, Cheilymenia cruci-pila may be mentioned. A new nature reserve of the Warwickshire Trust, RytonWood, was visited on 22 September. This obviously has great potential but findswere few owing to the poor season. However, Boletus parasiticus was found; thishad not been found in the county up to the time the Fungus Flora of Warwick-shire was published, except for a 100 year old record by Cooke, but has beenrediscovered since, this being the third time.

Two forays were held outside Warwickshire, jointly with the SouthStaffordshire Naturalists and other societies. One was in Sandwell Valley, a mostimpressive and extensive area of varied countryside sandwiched between