​When we wander around the bush admiring the wildlife and wildflowers we walk over an ancient, complex, and fascinating ecosystem of  algae, lichens, bryophytes, and fungi.
It is thought that land plants and fungi spread to land via freshwater ponds. First were simple algae, which would have produced mats of dead material, which became food for the first fungi about 450 million years ago. About this time south-west Western Australia was a part of Gondwana, which was above sea level and close to the equator. I am tempted to think that these great events occurred near present-day Narrogin. Well, several kilometres above Narrogin, as the land surface has eroded down that much since then.

​Around this time bryophytes (mosses, liverworts and hornwarts) also appeared. Bryophyte sexual reproduction can only occur in the presence of water, but they survive and produce clones in dry conditions.

I spent hours wandering around on hands and knees inspecting moss and liverworts. They are very common once one gets down to their level, and they look deceptively like higher plants. No way!  Unlike true plants, bryophytes lack true roots and stems. They directly absorb nutrients and water into their ‘leaves’ and have very different life cycles.

Consider first the life cycle of a higher plant.
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Adult plants have two sets of genes in each cell (diploid). Most plants have a male gene and a female gene (monoecious plants, hermaphrodites) with flowers that have male (anthers with pollen) and female (ovary with egg) parts. Gymnosperms have male and female flowers on a single plant.  Dioecious plants have male and female plants, each with have two male or two female genes and develop male or female flowers. In the short-lived flower phase, cells in anthers and ovary split to form pollen and eggs that have only one set of chromosomes (haploid cells/gametes), which are brought together to fuse and develop into diploid seeds.

In the bryophyte life cycle, resistant haploid spores become long-lived plants (gametophytes), which have only one set of chromosomes. The plants produce sperm and egg receptacles. When conditions are wet enough, male sperm swims over to fertilise eggs on other (dioecious) plants or parts of the same (monoecious) plant.
​Unlike higher plants, the (double-gene) fertilised egg grows into a very short-lived 'plant' (a sporophyte) inside the egg receptacle of the parent gametophyte, which  continues to nourish it. The sporophyte usually grows a narrow stem ending with a fruiting body called a sporophore. Inside the sporophore, double chromosome cells split into single chromosome gametes, which form wind-dispersed spores.
The spores can resist drying, which enables mosses and liverworts to colonise seasonally dry and freshly disturbed soil.

Liverworts come in more shapes than the 'typical' flat liver shaped gametophyte above, and can easily be mistaken for moss.
Some distinguishing features include

• They contain oil glands in their tissue.
• Gametophytes can be elongated or crinkled, but the sections have linear growth. Moss generally have spiral growing points.
• Liverwort sporophytes have shorter, clear to black stalks and glandular spore capsules. Moss have longer green stalks and container-like spore capsules, which often have a noticeable lid and/or spike.
• At Narrogin, liverworts tend to be in wetter spots, whereas moss is more generally common.

 
​The bryophyte gamete phase is very hardy. I often see clumps of moss clones in the driest parts of the landscape such as gravelly rises and breakaways.  Clumps completely dry out over summer. After rain they rapidly rehydrate  and produce more clones within the clumps. 
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The image shows a gametophyte clump with spore-bearing sporophytes, and clone fragments that have broken away to be carried away by runoff to establish downslope. Most dry area clumps with sporophytes are hermaphrodites. These produce both spore and egg receptacles on the same plants, so less rain is needed to splash sperm on to the eggs, than in separate male and female gametophytes. 

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​I wish I could take a time machine back to see ancient forests.
Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by giant mushrooms 8 meters tall and one meter wide, over a knee-high understorey of bryophytes, other fungi and lichens. These Prototaxites fossils have been dug up in Saudi Arabia.

​Last July I was excited to find my first false truffle (a Rossbeevera species) at Candy Block, which resembled a small half-submerged, blue-tinted potato. False truffles (also known as false puffballs) differ from true truffles in being basidiomycetes rather than ascomycetes.
The smell of the false truffle after cutting was legendary. Think Eau de Dead Roo with a hint of turpentine! This type of fungi sits below soil level, or sometimes at soil level buried under leaf litter. They don’t have a cap that opens up to release spores, but instead, the spores are formed inside the body of the fungus. False truffles resemble puffballs which don’t release their spores. They rely on birds and animals to eat them, the spores passing through the animal’s digestive tract and deposited in their scats.
The woylie has a largely fungivorous diet and will dig for a wide variety of their fruiting bodies.  Although it may eat tubers, seeds, insects the bulk of its nutrients are derived from underground fungi, which it digs out with its strong fore-claws. The fungi can only be digested indirectly. They are consumed by bacteria in a portion of its stomach. The bacteria produce the nutrients that are digested in the rest of the animal's stomach and small intestine. Before white settlement woylies were abundant so there are lots of false truffles around. We neither see nor smell them because they are usually just beneath the ground or leaf litter

A few weeks later I discovered lots of little yellow Rhizopogon species false truffles on the ground adjoining pine trees in the arboretum. Nearly all false truffle species are mycorrhizal fungi, and Rhizopogon was deliberately introduced into pine plantations with slippery Jacks (Suillus luteus) to improve tree growth. These also resembled tiny yellow potatoes, which eventually collapsed into an unbelievably horrible smelling mush (due to them getting wet through borer holes).

​Early fungi classification was very logical with above-ground capped fungi such as agarics and boletes being in a different group to puffballs, earthballs and false truffles. Alas DNA analysis reveals  more complicated relationships with puffballs and earthballs and false truffles spread across groups. One would think that there is a big difference between  capped and ball type fungi, but one overseas agaric rarely fails to open due to a single recessive gene. I can imagine a gradation in the images below.

The very simplified chart below shows that puffballs, earthballs and false truffles have evolved from/with a range of cap fungi. 
Further reading

​Greetings fellow Foxies,
In the fungus world, punks are large showy, bracket sporophores (fungal fruiting bodies) that usually occur on their own on the upper trunks of large eucalypts. You can download factsheets on Laetiporus portentosus /white punk and Piptoporus australiensis/curry punk (and other fungi) on this great DBCA website. These fungi cause heartwood rot and may occur on live or dead trees.

​​​White punk forms large pale to light brown, spongy brackets, often up to 30cm diameter. The underside is a pore layer, light yellow to citrus yellow in colour. Images show a range of colours and forms that I have encountered. The brackets form in late autumn. They are long-lasting, often looking fresh for several months.
Over spring and early summer, they dry out and become quite light with a chalky texture. They are usually seen in this state at the foot of the tree on which they were growing. If conditions are right, a new bracket will develop in the same place the following autumn.

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Curry punks are similar size, but less common. When fresh the bracket is bright orange, smooth or greasy on the upper surface, with a layer of pores on the underside.
The flesh is rubbery, but very juicy making the brackets quite heavy. Curry punk juice is a good dye and will stain your skin or clothing yellow.
​Brackets persist for some months, but rain tends to wash them out and they fade to a whitish colour as they age. When dry they have a distinctive curry odour, hence the common name of curry punk.

White punk shells were used by Noongars to transport fire. I did an experiment and discovered that they are ideal for this purpose. A lit punk barely smoulders when unattended. but ignites when blown.  

I understood that curry punks aged similarly to white punks until I found what I thought was an old and an ancient curry punk on a dead marri. Unlike white punks the sporophore was woody. 

There is significant variation between Cortinarius species particularly with the stem and stem base. ​

Distinguishing factors for the Cortinarius genus are:-
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1. All Cortinarius have rusty brown to brown spores. Don't be fooled by gill colour, which often darkens with age.
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2. The name Cortinarius refers to a cortina (meaning curtain) of slimy webby tissue that covers the developing gills from the cap to the stem (a partial veil). As the toadstool expands this dries and collapses on to the stem to form a webby ring zone that is often stained with spores and may disappear entirely.

3. ​Developing toadstools have a slimy cap and some also have a slimy stalk. Both dry as the cap expands.
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4 The caps also fade as they expand and become dry (hygrophanous).
Cortinarius rotundisporus (elegant blue webcap) below and on the left shows this well. The sticky cap often traps tiny arthropods that crawl around eating organic matter and fungal spores.

5. Cortinarius are mycorrhizal fungi that emerge around their host trees. Cortinarius archerii occurs every winter near peg 144. Cortinarius multisporus is common around moist rocky soil under rock sheoaks, and Cortinarius erythraeus popped up in yellow sand near Eucalyptus aspersa mallees this year.

Cortinarius archeri (Archers webcap) below is a large toadstool, which varies in the presence of a cortina and ring zone.

Three less common species are shown below.
the large Cortinarius australiensus (skirt webcap) has an unusual stem ring, like a sock fitted over the lower stem. This is called a volva and is the residue from a universal veil that covers the entire toadstool before the cap expands.​​
Small Cortinarius austrovenetus is rare, and will be another highlight when I find it.

For more information see this web page.