Greetings fellow Foxies,
Last week after rain, I discovered a lichen with a raised milky-white centre. After trying to convince people that I had found the rare “Poached Egg Lichen”, I was politely informed that the white mass was a False Puffball Reticularia Lycerpodon that just happened to form its spore mass on a lichen.
This is a type of slime mould that is distinctive in forming a tough ‘skin’ on its powdery spore mass (sporangium) to resemble a puffball. The skin became obvious as the sporangium dried.
It is quite unusual to find slime moulds in November. As their name signifies, they move around in wet weather, (mostly winter) as slimy threads of protoplasm called plasmodium, that group together to form fruiting bodies (sporangia). If conditions become very dry when this species is in the plasmodial stage it is able to survive as a dry dormant resting body called a sclerotium. When wet weather returns the sclerotium changes to the plasmodial stage to feed before forming a sporangium at the end of the season.
Note that there are two lichen species on the bark. The large one faded from sea green to greenish grey as it dried, but the small one retained its light green colour.

​Despite many years of wandering around Foxes Lair and surrounds I still make new discoveries that excite my imagination.
A Buddhist saying goes “If a fool persists in his folly. He may become a wise man”
Let us hope it works!
p.s. The saying is equally applicable to all genders.

​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!

​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.