Poroid Fungi from the Azores

Abstract

The collections reported in this paper were largely obtained as part of a general mycological investigation of the Azores archipelago undertaken by BMS and G. B. Butterfill (Kew) during two visits to the Islands, in April May 1995 and OctoberNovember 1996. They form part of a larger collection of fungi the study of which is still ongoing. Previous papers based on these collections have treated the Uredinales and Ustilaginales (Spooner & Butterfill 1999c), Myxomycetes (Ing et al. 1999), coprophilous discomycetes (Spooner & Butterfill 1999b), a new genus of coelomycetes (Punithalingam & Spooner 1999), and the heterobasidiomycetes (Roberts & Spooner 2004). In addition to these collections, a small number of fungi collected by P. J. Wanstall from Pico in September 1952 has recently been received at Kew. Several poroid species were included amongst these and are also reported here. The Azores archipelago, situated in the midAtlantic some 1250 km west of the nearest part of Europe, is of tertiary age and comprises nine main islands. These are volcanic in origin and were never connected to any land mass. Since colonisation by European settlers during the 15th century, the wildlife of the Azores has, inevitably, been greatly influenced by human activity. The native flora, especially, has been and continues to be adversely affected in many areas, sometimes severely so, by the naturalisation and spread of exotic species from many parts of the world able to thrive in the mild, humid climate. This has also had an influence on the