Dear Bob,

Your collections have proved to be of great interest ! I spent two hours today looking at the specimens thoroughly and you DO have two species from the same locality !

Small brownish specimen : is a small fruitbody of Hydnellum spongiosipes with ellipsoid,nobbly spores these 6-7 x 4-5 mu - there are no records of this from Wales on ours or the British Mycological Society database thus this is a very nice find ! I usually see this much bigger and often with the fruitbodies confluent, in various places e.g the New Forest where it is not infrequent

Paler specimen : is Phellodon confluens with totally globose SPINY spores these 3-4 mu in diameter,with a large apiculus. The fruitbodies have also developed the strong and distinctive smell of fenugreek (curry powder) on drying ! This too has no records on either database (from Wales) so yet another excellent find !

(Extract of reply from Nick Legon at Kew)