Roo-chewed salmon gum bolete 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
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
 Rossbeevera in the soil |  Rossbeevera section showing mature spores |  We are fungiphiles |
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).
Rhizopogon species false truffle stages of development in winter. Scale shows millimeters
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.
 Cut unopened agaric |  stalked puffball |  Cut mesophellia false truffle |
The very simplified chart below shows that puffballs, earthballs and false truffles have evolved from/with a range of cap fungi.
Further reading
Further reading
