​Greetings fellow Foxies,
A chance discovery of a mass of brilliant yellow spores erupting from the ground led me to the interesting world of mycotrophic fungi – fungi that parasitise other fungi. These are common in parts of the world but only one is listed in WA. This is Hypomyces chrysospermus, ominously called the bolete destroyer, which is an ascomycete fungus.
 
Ascomycetes generally have small fruiting bodies that are frequently disc or rod-shaped. They are most commonly seen as the small fruiting discs on lichens, where fungi have an association with single celled algae.
 Cordyceps genus ascomycetes gruesomely parasitise insects and spiders like the golden orb weaver I found in Foxes Lair. Cordyceps affects a caterpillar’s brain, inducing it to climb up a stem. A Cordyceps fruiting body then grows out of the insect’s head where its spores are spread. (delightful!).

​I found Hypomyces affected boletes in soil adjoining a drain on the north side of salmon gum bolete patch in the arboretum. They were less than a quarter the size of unaffected boletes and had only partially emerged.
​Three specimens below show increasing stages of infection.
The least affected bolete below had a Hypomyces white powdery coat, except for a small unaffected area on the top of the cap.
Fungus fly maggots normally start eating these boletes as they have reached full size but had already tunnelled through most of this specimen (probably because it was parasitised).
Hypomyces has three stages of spore production. The first 2 asexual stages have white and then gold spores. The last sexual stage has minute colourless flasks.​ White Hypomyces hyphae containing white asexual spores has invaded maggot holes and pores of the bolete.

The more advanced second specimen appeared quite dry on the exterior. Presumably, maggots had eaten out the stem but were forced out of the other tissue by Hypomyces hyphae (I wonder if it is toxic?).
 The cross section shows that most bolete tissue has been replaced by yellow Hypomyces hyphae and spores.

The interior of the third bolete has been completely replaced by Hypomyces hyphae and spores.
 A casual observer would think that they had found a yellow puffball at its powdery phase.
 The bolete has been well and truly destroyed!

Mat Rushes are monocotyledons, which look like sedges until they flower. They are clumpy perennials with tough leaves, which grow from underground rhizomes. Flower spikes with small delicate wind-pollinated flowers arise from the base of the plant.

Scented Lomandra, Lomandra effusa is an attractive plant, which flowers in September is common near the Claypit.

​Greetings fellow Foxies,
There has been a revolution in our understanding of soil formation in the last 20 years.
Narrogin has a part to play in this!
My former work colleague Dr Bill Verboom developed the theory that native plants and associated microbes created most of our soils to get preferential access to soil water and nutrients.
Roots of these plants secrete organic molecules that dissolve ‘locked’ nutrients like phosphorus and stimulate microbes and fungi to produce clays and ironstone gravels.
​
Hybanthus floribundis is a widely distributed small shrub with another unusual property.
It is an ‘accumulator’ plant that can preferentially extract nickel and cobalt from the soil. Values of up to 23% nickel in leaf ash may represent the highest recorded relative accumulation of a metal in a plant.
Potentially, it could be used to detoxify nickel mining tailings or even used for biological nickel mining.
Unfortunately, is difficult to grow from seed.
Hybanthus floribundis subsp. floribundis is only found in a water accumulating corner of the clay flat adjoining the claypit.
It must have suffered from the dry finish last year as I could only find a single flowering plant yesterday.
A member of the violet family, it has tiny exquisite flowers that most people would not notice

​Greetings fellow Foxies,
 
July is a time for appreciating small plants. Sundews are actively growing and harvesting insects for their nutrients. I love seeing the sun behind them lighting up drops of sticky insect-trapping ‘glue’ and dew in the early morning.
If you know where to look, there are carpets of tiny pygmy sundews. With one exception they only occur in Australia. 

​Pygmy sundews are explosive plants!! 

There are three species in Foxes Lair.
​
The first two are perennials that have cluster bomb type (gemmae) vegetative reproduction. Gemmae are produced early in the season after leaves have formed
Gemmae are modified leaves which detach, root, and form new plants. They are produced from the rosette center, and look like a bundle of little grapes or flat scales. They become so densely packed that the old leaf stipules are pushed away from the rosette centre. This acts like the cocking of a trigger---when a single raindrop strikes the mass of gemmae, the disturbance makes the stipules flex back to their normal positions in an explosive burst, thus shooting the gemmae as far as a few meters!
They can rapidly populate bare areas of soil when the surface is wet.

​Drosera androsaceae (Cone Sundew) occurs in wetter bare spots on the clay flat north-east of the Claypit.
These are amazingly tough plants as this area is wet when it rains, but dry and hard for much of the year.
Exceptionally dry weather last summer killed many but you can still see plants dotted in protected spots

​Drosera scorpioides (Shaggy Sundew) can be found on gravelly soils underneath the jarrah trees near the seat. The shaggy description is apt because they live for over a decade and develop a shaggy coat of dead tendril leaves as they grow up through the leaf litter. This and aerial micro stilt roots that elevate the plant above the soil surface make them admirably adapted to dry gravelly soils

​​They are very successful ant catchers. Lots of the plants had many tendrils curled, or slowly curling around captured ants

​ Perennial sundews produce flowers, but most fail to produce viable seed.

​Drosera glanduligera (Pimpernel sundew) is the only annual sundew. It only occurs on one small spot near the Granite Walk but is fairly common on shallow moist soils on and around granite rocks.
It is explosive in another way! Its tendrils close so quickly that it might just be the fastest moving plant in the world. (check out the video on this link)
Tendrils move faster than the eye can see: a couple of hundredths of a second. "And an ant or prey will walk on that gland and the gland will actually flick it into the centre of the leaf. There is no escape."
Amazing for a plant that is no more than 6cm tall. Minute, deadly and beautiful