_General Information_: This rather variable, and therefore often perplexing, fungus causes a destructive rot of trees and can travel long distances through the soil with the use of its rhizomorphs. It commonly grows on several species of broad-leaved trees, but can also colonise conifer trees. It also attacks garden shrubs, such as privet-hedges, and is particularly destructive to Rhododendrons causing a wilt of the whole shrub and subsequent death; it has also been recorded as attacking potatoes. The actively growing mycelium which can often be found growing under the bark of infected trees, exhibits a luminosity if freshly exposed and placed in a darkened room. The rhizomorphs of _A. mellea_ are highly specialised structures composed of mycelial threads some of which have become rather more differentiated than is normally found in the vegetative stage of other agarics. _Illustrations_: F 27a; Hvass 26; LH 93; NB 141¹; WD 4³. ~Pholiota squarrosa~ (Fries) Kummer Shaggy Pholiota _Cap_: width 50-120 mm. _Stem_: width 17-25 mm; length 95-125 mm. _Description_: Plate 11. Cap: convex, but expanding and becoming flattened with a slight central umbo, ochre-yellow to yellowish rust-colour and covered with dark brown recurved scales which are particularly dense at the centre. Stem: variable in length and thickness depending on how it is attached to the substrate, whether in a deep crack or wound, or in a depression, and how many specimens are in the cluster; its colour is similar to that of the cap, exhibits a small, dark brown fibrillose, torn ring or ring-zone and is ornamented with recurved red-brown scales below that ring. Gills: broadly adnate with a decurrent tooth and crowded, yellowish at first then rust-coloured. Flesh: with strong, pleasant but pungent smell, yellowish brown, soft in the cap, fibrous in the stem. Spore-print: rich rust-brown. Spores: medium-sized, pale brown under the microscope, smooth, ellipsoid, and 6-8 × 4 µm in size. Marginal cystidia: spindle-shaped, hyaline, numerous. Facial cystidia: flask-shaped with a small apical appendage and becoming rich yellow when immersed in solutions containing ammonia. _Habitat_ & _Distribution_: Common in clusters in woods, gardens or parks, on wood or at the base of the trunks of broad-leaved trees in summer and autumn. [Illustration: Plate 10. Fleshy fungi: Spores white and borne on gills]