Girl, 10, finds `lost' fungus

A 10-year-old girl has become the toast of the mushroom world after unearthing a specimen thought to have vanished from Britain 70 years ago.

Katie Whipp found the puff-ball fungus, known as Berkeley's Earth Star, close to her home at Cradley, near Malvern, Hereford and Worcester. The last known sighting of the mushroom - named after the founding father of mycology, the Rev Miles Joseph Berkeley - was in Norfolk in 1925. Dr David Pelger, head of mycology at Kew, described the find as the "best and most exciting find this year".