Cornish Biodiversity Network - Supporting Wildlife Recording
The descriptive text, below the map, is from the Cornish Red Data Book (2009). The map on this web page depicts the organisms distribution and shows the records made pre-2000 and those made since.
Range & Status
Dark purple to brownish tongue-like fungus emerging from the soil in acid grassland. Only known from two sites in Cornwall: acid grassland on mine spoil at Phoenix United Mine at Minions on Bodmin Moor. Here the fungus can be quite numerous, in clusters, during certain years. This site is a SSSI partly because of the presence of Cornish Pathmoss Ditrichum cornubicum , however, landscaping exercises could threaten the fungus. The fungus has also been recorded, as solitary specimens, rather unusually growing in grassland overlying ultramafic serpentine at Kynance Cove (The National Trust and a NNR) on the Lizard Peninsula. Serpentine rock, and the soil derived from it, does however contain relative high amounts of the ' heavy' metals chromium, cobalt and nickel. The two Cornish sites should be subject to survey and monitoring and be protected against habitat loss and degradation. G. atropurpureum is a UK BAP List Priority Species which is internationally threatened.
I.J. Bennallick, S. Board, C.N. French, P.A. Gainey, C. Neil, R. Parslow, A. Spalding and P.E. Tompsett. eds. 2009. Red Data Book for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. 2nd Edition.Croceago Press.
The Cornish Red Data Book Project was led by the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Federation for Biological Recorders (CISFBR). The full text and species accounts (minus the maps) are available on the CISFBR website.