Mycoporum lacteum
Key Details
| Taxonomic Groups: | Fungus or lichen > fungus > Non-lichenised microfungus |
| Red List Status: | Near Threatened (Not Relevant) [NT(nr)] |
| D5 Status: | Included in the baseline Red List Index for England (Wilkins, Wilson & Brown, 2022) |
| Section 41 Status: | (not listed) |
| Taxa Included Synonym: | (none) |
| UKSI Recommended Name: | Mycoporum lacteum |
| UKSI Recommended Authority: | (Ach.) R.C. Harris |
| UKSI Recommended Qualifier: | (none specified) |
| Red List Citation: | Woods & Coppins, 2012 |
| Notes on taxonomy/listing: | (none) |
Criteria
| Question 1: | Does species need conservation or recovery in England? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Rare. In England confined to under 20 hectads, with strongholds in New Forest and Cumbria. |
| Question 2: | Does recovery/ conservation depend on species-specific actions? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | A specialist fungus of old Hollies, with key evidence gaps concerning its status and autecology. |
| Question 3: | At a landscape scale, would the species benefit from untargeted habitat management to increase habitat mosaics, structural diversity, or particular successional stages? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Part of a large group of species threatened by under grazing of old growth woodlands |
Species Assessment
| Current step on the Species Recovery Curve (SRC): | 5. Remedial action identified |
| Recovery potential/expectation: | Medium-high |
| National Monitoring Resource: | Opportunistic - insufficient |
| Species Comments: | Healthy populations require extensively grazed minimum intervention pasture woodland, restoring grazing to woodlands is difficult and opposed by some policies. Conservation depends on both the survival of old Hollies and the maintenance of humid but well lit condition with pasture woodlands. |
Key Actions
Key Action 1
Proposed Action: Produce species dossier including collation of latest information on all known sites outside of the New Forest e.g. status assessment, habitat conditions. This will inform subsequent actions.
Action targets: 5. Remedial action identified
Action type: Scientific research
Duration: 1 year
Scale of Implementation: ≤ 50 sites
High priority sites:
Comments:
Key Action 2
Proposed Action: Survey sites with no recent information (identified through A1) to update status assessments, identify habitat management issues and identify actions required to address them
Action targets: 5. Remedial action identified
Action type: Status survey/review
Duration: 3-5 years
Scale of Implementation: ≤ 100 sites
High priority sites:
Comments: Will be informed and guided by A1
Key Action 3
Proposed Action: Advise and support site owners and managers to implement the site-level actions identifies in A1 and A2
Action targets: 7. Best approach adopted at appropriate scales
Action type: Advice & support
Duration: 6-10 years
Scale of Implementation: ≤ 50 sites
High priority sites:
Comments: Positive impacts on many threatened lichen species. Potential to bundle this with other grazing dependant woodland species.
Acknowledgment:
Data used on this website are adapted from Threatened species recovery actions 2025 baseline (JP065): Technical report and spreadsheet user guide (Natural England, 2025). Available here.