Greeting Fellow Foxies,
​
Each winter, small orange-brown Gymnopilus mushrooms emerge on and around dead wood at Narrogin, particularly in rock sheoak woodland.
The fruit body is typically reddish-brown to rusty orange to yellow, medium to large. The veil (ring of tissue around the stem below the cap) varies. It is often not obvious on older specimens, but can be well developed. They produce large amounts of ochre-brown spores that can coat the veil, stem and ground underneath. Most members of Gymnopilus grow on wood but at times may appear to be soil fungi if the wood is buried.
The name means naked pileus, which I assume refers to the relatively regular, smooth and dry cap. 

Gymnopilus is not edible.

A wet autumn-winter has really stimulated large Gymnopilus Junonius (Spectacular Rustgill) that forms clumps of overlapping mushrooms. I found three large groups in different locations.
1. The youngest find had two groups around and about a metre away from a Eucalyptus caesia mallee (that was probably planted on or near an old tree base). They resembled large orange  "button mushrooms" that live in the soil.
2. The second find was a more advanced group that had emerged at the base of a mallee street tree. Initially it was misidentified as the aggressive pathogen Armillaria luteobubalina (Australian Honey Fungus), which is very similar, but has white spores. The image below shows a coating of brown spores on cap and stems. Gymnopilus  .junosius can be a weak pathogen, but the mallee may have also been planted near a long dead and disappeared tree. 
3. The third find at the base of a dead wandoo was past its prime. The darkened fully expanded caps overlapped each other so much that they resembled oyster mushrooms.

​Greetings fellow Foxies,
I recently made my first-ever find of a beautiful fungus called Hohenbuehelia petaloides on a dolerite ridge adjoining the junction of Granite and Narrakine South roads. Despite much searching there was only one specimen that had grown from an underground rotting branch or a root.
It is an oyster fungus with gills that run down the stalk (decurrent) and has white spores. Most images on the web show a pale cap. 

A few interesting features are:

• It is named after an Austrian aristocrat: Ludwig Samuel Joseph David Alexander Freiherr von Hohenbühel Heufler zu Rasen und Perdonegg. Try saying that after a few beers? or even before!
• It has a novel way of obtaining nitrogen, which is lacking in wood: Sticky ends on the hyphae, trap nematodes in the soil to harvest their protein.
• I reckon that it resembles a wood fungus I use in my stir fries. Hang on, that has a different name and pores not gills! another poisoning averted :).

Apparently Hohenbuehelia is very similar to Pleurotis, but has a thinner, tougher cap due to a very tough layer below the top 'skin'. I guess I will find out when I find and compare a Pleurotis.

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.