Fabulous fungi

riverinawildlife

I was fortunate enough to attend a workshop about fungi run by Alison Pouliot on the weekend. We ended the day with a walk through Wagga Wagga Botanic Gardens looking for fungi, and found more than I’d expected to. I have no idea what most of these are, although I’m sure Alison could tell you, but they look rather fab so I thought I’d share. Click on the photos to enlarge, they look better bigger.

I do remember that the red one is Aseroe rubra, the first native Australian fungus to be scientifically described, we found several specimens, but most looked like shrivelled reddish petals or similar, very uninteresting, so finding the one fully open specimen was exciting.

Please excuse the terrible formatting in this post – all the pics I’ve added captions to have ‘floated’ to the top, meaning some of the photos are now out of sequence.

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Aseroe rubra – poorly formed specimen Edit for clarity: the fungus is the skinny pink thing in the middle
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Fungal mycelium decomposing a leaf
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Mirror being used to show the under-cap features of the fungi without resorting to picking them
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Close-up of lichen fruiting bodies
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Aseroe rubra – much better specimen

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8 thoughts on “Fabulous fungi”

  1. sporesmouldsandfungi April 16, 2015 / 1:41 pm

    Lovely set of photos but your “Aseroe rubra – poorly formed specimen” are fruits off a tree?

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    • riverinawildlife April 16, 2015 / 2:16 pm

      Thanks. Yeah, that’s not the best picture and I probably shouldn’t have included it. The orange things are fruits from a tree (unripe dates from a palm I think), the fungus is the weird-looking, shrivelled pink thing in the middle. You can see it a little more clearly if you click on the photo to enlarge it. I’ll have another look through my photos and see if I’ve got a better one to use.

      Thanks for commenting! 🙂

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      • sporesmouldsandfungi April 17, 2015 / 11:06 am

        I enlarged it and you are right. It has become elongated and collapsed.

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  3. swanlyric April 30, 2015 / 1:14 pm

    Love this article. Do you think we’d find similar in Narrandera Flra & Fsuna reserve Kimberley?

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    • riverinawildlife April 30, 2015 / 2:03 pm

      Thanks. 🙂

      And yes, I’m not a fungi expert by any means, but I would expect there would be a variety of fungi at Narrandera Flora & Fauna Reserve, and now if probably a good time of year to go looking for them. These fungi were found growing in the highly-controlled, highly-trafficked environment of the Botanic Gardens, including in the lawn areas as well as the garden beds, so I would expect to see at least as many specimens, and probably more, in a ‘wild’ environment, even one that sees as much use as Narrandera Common. I might see about arranging for a ramble there sometime in May to see what can be found.

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