​Greetings fellow Foxies,
 
I found a big and unusual fungus today in the arboretum that looks like a gilled toadstool but is classified as a bolete. A few clues to the classification are:

• It is quite large (20cm diameter here)
• It is very chunky with the fleshy part of the pileus (cap) very thick compared to the gills below
• The gills peel off the fleshy part fairly easily
• A blue stain appears when it is cut (common with boletes) then fades.

Like all the boletes I know it is a mycorrhizal fungus.
Boletes occur regularly in the arboretum, particularly the huge Salmon Gum Bolete, and Slippery Jack.
Images below compare it with a similar looking agaric Austropaxillus infundibuliformis that is commonly found in rock sheoak areas.

.​The spore print colour is called olive yellow.
It is amazing how quickly fungus fly maggots have eaten out the centre of boletes that look untouched on the outside.

Greetings fellow Foxies,
​Boletes are fleshy fungi with a central stalk like agarics (mushrooms toadstools) but the underside has pores instead of gills. Polypores have pores like boletes but are generally tough or leathery fungi that usually arise from wood.

In early winter the giant salmon gum bolete Phlebopus marginatus pops up amongst trees down from the picnic area at the arboretum. The similar but slightly smaller Slippery Jack bolete Suillus luteus occurs next to it. This is an import that forms  mycorrhizae on the adjoining pine trees. It is apparently a delicacy in Italy, but must be peeled and cooked ( looks ghastly as a food item to me). Only once I found the beautiful Rhubarb Bolete Boletellus obscurecoccineus near the claypit.

​A few years ago I found a 'fairy ring' of salmon gum boletes in the arboretum. They were pretty humungous and eaten out by fungus fly maggots - A goblin ring?



​
There are still lots of boletes that remain unnamed, and many boletes change colour ('stain') when bruised or cut.The one below is a blue stainer. Yellow pores and white flesh turn blue when cut or bruised.

This june the large one below popped up and covered a mallee seedling I was watering at the Marri picnic area. The stem turned reddish brown and the pores rapidly turned blue when cut. I have heard of red-blue stainers, perhaps it is one.

Greetings fellow Foxies,
I never cease to be amazed by the things one can learn by observing nature and asking questions.
 I photographed tiny pools of water containing dead insects on a gilled fungus and asked about it on the Western Australian Fungi Facebook Page.
I learnt that they are 6 legged fungi-eating Springtails (not insects!) on Cortinarius rotundidisporus (Elegant Blue Webcap). The group includes lucerne fleas, but are everywhere – even as innocuous residents in the house. As to the drowned ones, just read the extract from the Facebook site below.
 "Temporary rain pools are a kind of trap for small surface-active springtails. Once they jump into such a pool they cannot easily escape from it. Due to the meniscus of the pool surface water at the edges, they will always slide back to the center of the pool. Eventually they will aggregate and form a kind of floating mass of crawling bodies from which some specimens will be able to escape by jumping away.
"If and when a sufficient number of individuals of the same species of Hypogastruridae gather together by accident on such a pool, another thing might happen. Adult females will release a sex pheromone to attract males. Also other females will be attracted by the pheromone signal. The more individuals gather together, the stronger the pheromone signal and more individuals will be attracted from a greater distance. This may eventually result in the spectacular mass aggregations typical for Hypogastruridae. 100,000s of individuals may aggregate as such. The purpose of these mass aggregations is to reproduce.
The pool party then becomes in fact a sex party! ;-)
 
OMG I posted springtail pornography!

This fungus ((family Nidulariaceae (Nidulis -‘small nest)) feeds on decomposing organic matter has fruiting bodies that are tiny wonders of nature.
Being only a few millimetres in diameter, they are easily missed or mistaken for puffballs or slime mould spore balls. Lyn Alcock captured Cyathus olla (Field Birds Nest) cups opening on a tiny fallen twig in Foxes Lair.
The fruiting body starts like a mini puffball, before the membrane on top thins and breaks to reveal a cup containing ‘eggs’ called peridioles. Each peridiole contains spores and structure that produce them that are covered by a tough membrane. Raindrops falling directly into the cup splash the peridioles out of the cup on to grow.