In the forest, after rain and while there is still some warmth in the sunshine, I am bound to find some stunning fungi popping up amongst the leaves or blooming on the tree trunks.
What amazes me is that each season I find new ones, at least, never before seen by me here. In just one week here’s some of the treasures I spotted without walking very far or looking very hard.
The black object on the bottom left is my gumboot-shod foot, just so you get the scale of this rosy trio that erupted right beside the path up to the loo.
This rather slimy little chocolate cap came with tiny choc chips, a dollop of whipped cream and an insect visitor that I didn’t even see until I blew up the photo. It was spotted from the loo itself, which has no door to inhibit nature watching.
Like orange sherbet ice blocks, these dainty fungi look good enough to eat, and there were hundreds of them scattered throughout the grass in a small area. I resisted.
As if orange sherbet wasn’t tempting enough, just inside my house yard a batch of half a dozen freshly baked chocolate cakes, un-iced, had appeared overnight.
Plump and smooth and bigger than cup cakes, two of them looked as if someone else had already taken a bite. I could almost smell chocolate cake!
Any ideas of the identification of these fungi will be very welcome; I have looked in my books, but have given up!
Many thanks Gaye, for those suggestions. Fungi is a fascinating world! Thank you for observing it so well for the rest of us.
Hello Sharyn,
I’m inclined to think your “chocolate cap with a dollop of whipped cream” might be Amanita punctata. It is slightly viscid (slimy) when young, and even more so when wet, with the striated margin as is illustrated in your specimen. The white mark on the top of the cap is likely to be the remnants of a veil, in which case there will be a volva (sack-like structure) at the base of the stem. As the fungus grows, the cap will expand and become flattened, and the striated margin will become more pronounced.
Cheers,
Gaye
Hi Paula,
your fungus that turns blue is likely to be a bolete, which has pores (tiny holes) on the fertile under-surface, rather than gills. I haven’t yet posted up any boletes that change colour on my Fungi Blog (thanks Sharyn), but here is a post on my Pilliga Blog that features a blue-staining bolete fungus – amazing things!
http://pilligablog.blogspot.com/2011/02/bolete-fungus-with-purple-larvae.html
Gaye
Sounds very weird Paula, but may I suggest you visit Gaye’s blog on fungi, as she’s much more informed than I am? Ask her the same question.
http://australianfungi.blogspot.com/
I found a fungi in my yard and was wondering if someone could tell me about it. It was brown on the cap, but the stem and underpart was yellow. When I picked it and broke it in half the color changed from yellow to blue to green and then black. Any ideas?
Thanks
Have just looked at Denis’s blog: check out the HUGE boletes fungi he recently photographed!!
(See The Nature of Robertson link on my site.)
Thanks for the I.D. clues, Denis. Will look at my books again with that in mind, and yes, I ought to be more scientific. I guess I just boggle at their beauty or strangeness at the time and think about them later!
Hi Sharyn
I love the fact that your outdoor loo allows you to observe the fungi.
The little “Orange sherbet” ones are probably Hygrocybe of some description.
The chocolate cakes might be something like “Leucopaxillus”.
You need to study the underneath as well, to get a better idea of whether they have pores or gills, and to note colour of spores, if possible.
Lovely to look at, anyway.
You are obviously having a good fungal blooming. The rain has paid off for you.
Cheers
Denis
‘Amazing’ certainly is the word, DWG!
I am not an authority on Fungi, but I do think these are just some of the neatest ones. The orange sherbet is quite unique. I agree that someone has taken a bite from the chocolate cookie ones. Just amazing this
Mother Nature!! So many small wonders throughout the forests and fields. Thanks for sharing these!
DWG