Jassy Drakulic
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jassydrak.bsky.social
Jassy Drakulic
@jassydrak.bsky.social
320 followers 370 following 46 posts
RHS Senior Plant Pathologist and resident mycologist based at Wisley
Author of the RHS DK book Fungi for Gardeners:
https://linktr.ee/jassydrak
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jassydrak.bsky.social
My first book RHS Fungi for Gardeners is out now!
Such an amazing opportunity to write for RHS and with such fantastic publishers as DK.
Better yet is that doing it enabled me to get my own compound microscope 🤩🍄
Check how the hyphae bend out at 90° on Mycena leptocephala stems
#fungifriends
Dark blue hardback cover of RHS Fungi for Gardeners on a set of shelves of gardening books in a book shop Jassy Drakulic standing next to the bookshelves featuring her new book, smiling Red stained hyphae of nitrous bonnet with pointed ends that bend away from the stem at right angles
October 13, 2025 at 3:02 PM
jassydrak.bsky.social
A before and after of some fun early autumn fungi at RHS Wisley:
Bolete tbd species and Shaggy inkcap Coprinus comatus.
One will become ink for #UKFungusDay artwork and the other has made a nice ochre spore print
#gardens #fungi #mycology #outreach
September 20, 2025 at 11:48 PM
jassydrak.bsky.social
Marbled interior, smells sweet... Not a truffle, but a conker full of honey fungus!
This one was being used to test whether honey fungus affects ornamental grasses/wedges which have become popular horticultural plants
#ArmiArmy #fungi #planthealth
Conker, covered in dark soil, cut open showing marbled pale flesh inside In tact soil covered conker and a tangle of stringy dark rhizomorphs next to it, beneath dead grass leaves
August 22, 2025 at 9:49 AM
jassydrak.bsky.social
The #ArmiArmy has a new recruit - Mary Coates from University of York is doing a 10 week project at Wisley to develop faster ways to screen plants for resistance to armillaria root rot aka honey fungus 🍯🍄 #mycology #applied #invitro #mentorship #plantpathology #planthealth #horticulture
Research students Mary and Sam in the prep room washing cut pieces of privet roots Magenta box with agar set into a slope and honey fungus mycelium and rhizomorphs growing through it Cut pieces of privet roots placed on top of the agar and fungus slope Research summer student Mary squatting by an open incubator with magenta boxes of fungi and roots on agar lining several shelves
July 10, 2025 at 7:55 AM
jassydrak.bsky.social
Chunky conks on a dead tree in Wimbledon #fungi #mycology #decay
Looks very pale but for a red band which makes me consider Fomitopsis pinicola, although that isn't a comment sight in UK... No clue what the tree species is without any leaves/needles! Ideas welcome 🤗
Two brackets, woody but pale with age, on a tree trunk Both brackets from a different angle looking the same size as a bench which is actually a short distance away Scene showing the entire dead tree with its branches cut back to the trunk. The the two brackets emerge at roughly a third of its total height Underside of a bracket showing tiny pores and some white webbing where it meets the wood
June 23, 2025 at 9:43 PM
jassydrak.bsky.social
Vivid orange rust pustules on the back of burnet roses along the south coast path on the Isle of Portland
#plantpathology #rustfungus #wildflowers
Bright orange dusty spores of rose rust fungus on the back of a white flower of the burnet rose
May 23, 2025 at 10:49 PM
jassydrak.bsky.social
Loads of 6 spotted burnet moths on red valerian along the Weymouth shore today
#wildflowers #moths
Red head of lots of tiny florets of red valerian which is being visited by the 6 spotted burnet moth which is black bodied with red spots and black curved antenna
May 23, 2025 at 10:35 PM
jassydrak.bsky.social
Beautiful day to be working at Wisley. Two fantastic Hilltop Live presentations by our Pathologists for Plant Health Week #PHW2025 Big props to Sam for making his #honeyfungus research so clear for the visitors, even explaining its benefits to nutrient cycling in nature #ArmiArmy
May 9, 2025 at 6:35 PM
jassydrak.bsky.social
Signs of fungi on trees in a south London park: dried up Pleurotus ostreatus oyster mushrooms on a standing deciduous tree and huge black plaques resulting from some sort of other saprotrophic fungus
#fungifriends
#mycology
Underside of brown shrivelled oyster mushrooms on a tree trunk Black plaque of a fungus broken into scales on a mossy fallen log
April 3, 2025 at 6:23 PM
jassydrak.bsky.social
I didn't get to the bottom of identifying this pink crust fungus from a willow stem, but the hyphae looked beautiful under the microscope 💚🍄 #fungifriends #mycology
March 6, 2025 at 10:08 AM
jassydrak.bsky.social
Lots of polypores on the log piles at RHS Wisley. Looking splendid in the winter sunshine 🌞
#fungifriends #mycology
February 28, 2025 at 1:54 PM
jassydrak.bsky.social
Fruiting bodies of decay fungi decorating the dead hedge and log piles in the Wisley wildlife garden over winter

Trametes versicolor
Bjerkandera adusta
Trametes betulina
Panellus stipticus
#mycology #fungi
A rosette of striped brackets of Trametes versicolor growing from silver birch log Two stacked brackets of Bjerkandera adusta coming from a horizontal silver birch log stuck full of pine needles that it has grown around White-pink filled underside of Trametes betulina on a dead hedge upright wooden post Orange-cream gills underneath a crowd of Panellus stipticus growing from the cut end of a log on a log pile
January 26, 2025 at 9:24 PM
jassydrak.bsky.social
Fungi & flowers found doing @bsbibotany.bsky.social new year's plant hunt
#mycology
#botany
#fungifriends
Happy New Year!
December 31, 2024 at 9:47 PM
jassydrak.bsky.social
Merry Christmas! May your shanks be as velvety as festive bows 🎁🎄🍄 #fungifriends #mushrooms #mycology #fungi
Tiny clump of cespitose orange mushrooms which resemble young velvet shank
December 24, 2024 at 10:53 PM
jassydrak.bsky.social
PhD opportunity on honey fungus biology with #RHS & Uni of Birmingham. DL 16th January!
warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fa...

Population genetics, long-read genome assembly, infected plant trials under future climate conditions 🤩🍯🥰

#PhD #fungi #plants #climatechange #plantdisease #plantpathology #ArmiArmy
December 12, 2024 at 9:07 AM
jassydrak.bsky.social
Bold common rust gill mushrooms, Gymnopilus penetrans, can appear all the way from August to January in Temperate Europe.
Found along a wood chip path at RHS Wisley #fungi #mycology
Pair of bright orange mushrooms in the border between a wood chip path and grass verge One mushroom turned upside down to show it's yellow closely spaced gills and a central stem with pale fibres, and mycelium at the base connecting to fragments of wood chips that it was growing from
December 5, 2024 at 11:54 AM
jassydrak.bsky.social
Awesome talks at today's British mycological society autumn open meeting.
TIL that the Mycenas include way more #fungi than just your standard bonnets, some have pores not gills!
Very cathartic to see Julie Lawson's artwork, detoxifying capitalist realism with Pleurotus fungi
November 30, 2024 at 8:14 PM
jassydrak.bsky.social
Late autumn #fungi at RHS Wisley: blewits and Peziza sp. cups in a border, turkey tail on a cut log (with oyster logs in the background) in the world food garden, and upright coral lining a path
#fungi providing extra beauty in #horticulture on top of their ecological benefits
November 25, 2024 at 11:13 PM
jassydrak.bsky.social
Dun dun duuuuuun! Honey fungus strikes again!
Thank goodness, as that is what we were aiming for in this infection trial.
Turns out that our model privet species for fast infection is the *most* resistant species tested in the Ligustrum genus 🤦‍♀️😱
#plantpathology #mycology #ArmiArmy
#honeyfungus
November 25, 2024 at 10:53 PM