fungi

On a recent windy Saturday a group of Wolli Creek Preservation Society members joined a Fungi Foray in the Wolli Creek Valley. The walk was led by David Noble, an extraordinarily knowledgeable bushwalker and photographer.  We were invited by the Sydney Fungal Studies Group and it was one of a series of field trips held in and around Sydney during the fungi season, which is roughly late March to July.  

We met at Girrahween Park for a briefing and then set off along the track towards Russell’s Pool. It was a large and enthusiastic group, some with a depth of experience of fungi, and some newbies too. There was plenty of sharing of information and stories as we carefully explored likely fungi sites.

As a newbie, I was delighted to see puffballs (Scleroderma cepa), Trametes sp. and Descolia recedens.

We stopped to admire small outcrops of green hooded orchids. While these are not fungi, they are pollinated by fungus gnats, which they temporarily trap in their hoodlike structure.

There was also a fungus, Hypoxylon sp. that looked just like a burnt area on a fallen tree. 

Dave summed up the walk saying “Conditions were fairly dry, with not much fungi out and some of it quite dry. When it’s dry it can be hard to determine the species. It was a marked change from the Fungi Foray in the same area 2 months earlier, when there was much more abundance in the wetter weather.“

There were highlights though. Dave was pleased to see small colourful green waxcaps, known as Gliophorus gramincolor  (p14) (The green colour is due to the pigment, not chlorophyl) and Cuphophyllus asutropratensis, a waxcap which is listed as an endangered species.

“Each season is different so you see different things. Some fungi might come up every five years in a big bunch. Some come up in the same place every year. This season has been mixed. It’s been very good in some ways. But in other ways… it’s been too wet.”

I’m looking forward to seeing what the next fungi season brings.

Susie Cornish