Fungi – The woman on the mountain

Carabeen walk

December 23, 2024 by Fred Baker

If you like tree ferns as I do, there were so many on the drive into Cobcroft picnic area in Werrikimbe National Park that it was a treat.

At the car parking area, this yellow flowering small tree/shrub was new to me; I’d assumed it would be a yellow version of the white Ozothmanus that was plentiful in the area. But the boffins tell me it’s actually Cassinia telfordii.

The short Carabeen Walk takes me through a lush forest of eucalypts like Blue Gums, and tree ferns.

There are two sorts of tree ferns, the rough (Cyathea australis) and the soft (Dicksonia antarctica), both present in this forest. This spectacular old trunk is so decorated with mosses that I can only assume it is a rough trunked one underneath. I love the little rabbit’s foot pads on its trunk.

The walk is named for the Yellow Carabeen trees that dominate the wetter areas of its scope.

The sinuous buttresses of this species can extend from two to five metres up its trunks.

Vines and clinging ferns climbing up the trees are common.

The track has become narrow, and is not always easily distinguishable, with many fallen branches that I climb over or skirt around.

Hoary-footed old trees are a reminder that these slow-growing Carabeens have been making this forest for a very long time.

The young ones seem slender in comparison.

And it wouldn’t be a typical rainforest post for me without at least one sprinkling of fungi.

For the first time I also collected some leeches on this walk; as they were mainly on my hands, perhaps they got aboard when I hung on to fallen branches as I clambered over them. I react badly to them – physically – so the bites refreshed my memories of that walk for a week afterwards!

But the walk was worth it.

Gentle Boorganna

December 2, 2024 by Fred Baker

If you’ve never been up to the Comboyne Plateau, you have a treat in store. It’s high and green and often wet; I have never forgotten being told as a child that it got six feet of rain a year. At the time I lived on the Central Coast and I knew we got four feet of rain a year, so that was a vivid comparison for me.

I have now been there many times, noting the sign to Boorganna Nature Reserve, but never stopping to investigate it.

Now I have.

Boorganna is a gentle, special place, long ago put aside for us to wander down through its rainforest, along its leafy, rock-edged paths. There are plenty of informative signs on the way, about the forest, its buttressed and giant trees, and its inhabitants.

Most life goes on above us, green and lush and multi-storied, with twisting vines and clinging creepers and giant bird’s nest ferns all competing for the light.

When this forest giant fell, the path was sensibly cut into its girth. reinforcing its size in the minds of us small humans.

Not all the giants have fallen; this Brush Box is estimated to be as much as a thousand years old.

From the foot-stand slits in some of the big stumps, other giants were not so lucky to survive.

I reach the Rawson Falls Lookout, but decide not to continue to the base of the Falls, mindful that while it has all been a gentle wander downhill, the way back uphill will not feel so gentle on my knees.

As always, my eye is taken by details: I love that the fence at the Lookout is as spotted and bearded with lichen as the nearby trees.

I can look down more safely going uphill, and see delights I missed, like this absolute cornucopia of pale fungi.

Or these few strange papery cup fungi … and is that tiny stem in front a baby one?

There are many logs bedecked with fungi imitating fallen leaves … or potato crisps? I love that Nature does not restrict their artistic licence in design.

But of course, being a rainforest, green and ground matters dominate.

Boorganna offers the lot.

Rainforest fungi

September 16, 2024 by Fred Baker

In Nature nothing is wasted. Fallen and dead trees are habitat for fabulous fungi, and the damp conditions in these forests encourage them en masse.

Some were solid and strange, unknown to me… unless someone had been sneaking about with a can of whitewash.

Others were like flowers, fringed and delicate fans.

Amidst the profusion of mossy green, orange and white stood out.

Less obvious, but more unusual, were these black ones, looking more like moths which, having briefly alighted on this log, were choosing to stay and transform into the most fanciful shapes.

How beautiful is this cascade of snowy flakes?

Whether weird or wonderful, abundance was the common theme in these tropical forests.

I do love moss and lichen, but fungi have my heart too.

Roaming ‘round Roto

August 5, 2024 by Fred Baker

I have been told there is a track through the bushland below historic Roto House. This being a grey and bleak day, the beach does not appeal for a walk, so I aim to find that track.

I don’t, but through a deliberate gap in a netting fence I do stumble on to a patch of soggy forest.

It seems to have become a repository for the drains of the surrounding houses and for rubbish from trespassers.

It is still interesting bush, with features like this Bird’s Nest fern, the epiphytic Asplenium nidus, very low to the ground.

But it is hard to negotiate the muddy bits. And I know I’m not supposed to be here.

I retrace my steps, try the next ‘No through road’ street and find I am at the edge of the Roto House grounds.

A path skirts the lawn and scattered trees that border the wilder part, which today is alive with birdsong.

The tree trunks and tops are beautiful. The koala hospital is nearby, so I keep hoping to see a wild one in these trees, but no luck.

There are patches of colour along the way, from these fungi and from wattle that is starting to bedeck many roadsides.

There is even a strangler fig, familiar to me from my many walks though Wingham Brush. This one also houses another Bird’s Nest fern.

I am going to poke more closely around Roto House…

Eye catchers

March 27, 2023 by Fred Baker

The things in Nature that catch my eye often do so because they are beautiful or unusual, be they very large or very small, occurring by nature or by nurture.

Early morning, after a rainstorm the night before, this humble garden begonia flower cluster was truly ethereal, backlit, and still holding a crystal drop or two.

But equally eye-catching was this lone fungus standing tall and proud, smack in the centre of a pile of cow manure.

It can be the shy ones like these Native Violets, smiling up at me as I step carefully though the shaded grass.

Or it can be the boldly coloured and unmissably large, like the fruit of this palm!

And some are simply extraordinary, like the fleeting blooms of this cactus plant. As pretty as proteas, they glow as if filled with captured sunlight.

The parent is as tall as a tree and inhospitably knobbly and spiny, and yet it produces such brief beauty, to catch the eye for an evening … and then fold up, and die.

Little Fella details

November 28, 2022 by Fred Baker

In the Big Fella Gum Forest Reserve, whose mighty trees I admired last post, I was also intrigued by many of its small details.

Like the beautifully delineated shield-like leaves of this young Prickly Supplejack (Ripogonum discolor) which starts out looking as if it’s a shrub then becomes a strong climber. The sailors/Jack Tars on early voyages called it Supple Jack because of its climbing ability, and many parts of the plant are useful.

The few bright new leaves of this tree, Maiden’s Blush, (Sloanea australis) caught my eye several times. The name refers to the colour of its heartwood as well as its young leaves.

Even brighter were these very, very tiny red fungi hiding amongst the deep leaf litter. The water-logged ground beneath was soft, especially near the creek, and I sank several times… but I only attracted one leech.

Other fungi were larger and in the less-noticeable shades of brown.

Although this shelf fungus was so large that it drew attention without vivid colouring except for its white underside.

The extended roots of the big Turpentine were mostly buried under leaves, but this noticeable hump in its progress is clearly being used as shelter.

Unusual shapes and patterns in Nature always fascinate me, as did this small ladder of bark mouths or kisses, the origin of which nobody knew.

And if one tree was puckering up, another was choosing to send its green passenger growing sideways.

This palm chose to cascade its moss from a slit in its decorative lichen-splotched trunk.

And as a final show, in the unbroken depths of this rainforest pocket, a fallen giant lay shrouded in rich green velvet, decaying in beauty while nourishing the earth beneath.

No wonder my spirit itself feels nourished after such an excursion, fed with new sights and understandings, enlightened by others who know so much about our flora.

True colours less

October 25, 2022October 24, 2022 by Fred Baker

Much beauty can be found in restricted colour palettes in Nature, like this cloud-embellished early morning skyscape.

Brown is not usually a favourite colour of mine, but here, decorating tree trunks in elaborate patterns of cinnamon, cocoa and cream fungi, it is.

White always draws me in, and fungi can do that beautifully too, studding this slim tree with a constellation of tiny moth-like fungi.

The bush offers fascinating shapes in its restricted colour work too, as here in this water-washed path, where, as my walking companion noted, the tree roots made a perfect natural staircase.

Who needs gaudy colours when such subtle artistry abounds?

Resurrection reds

October 17, 2022 by Fred Baker

In many Australian trees and shrubs, new growth is heralded by reds, from pinkish red to orangey red.

Often these fresh leaves are more colourful or noticeable than the flowers, and are usually softer than the older leaves.

Red is even implied in the common name of this Bleeding Heart tree (Omalanthus). I loved that the small flower spikes were all curving as if posing for a Leunig cartoon.

In the areas devastated by bushfire two years ago, any new growth is welcome, but so is seeing the repurposing of trees burnt beyond resurrection as they host healthy fungi.

This one has become an arresting sculpture, while also nurturing small ferns in its hollow and a series of fungi steps on a limb.

Nature wastes nothing.

Green world

August 1, 2022August 1, 2022 by Fred Baker

Some rainforests are so totally green that you’d swear there’s been a Photoshop filter applied. This one near Mount Tamborine was no different. Green moss, green light under the covering tree canopy.

Whether tree roots and buttresses or accompanying boulders, all were mossed green.

Some roots went underground and reappeared as shy knees and thighs, modestly mossed.

In some places tree roots embraced boulders as closely as if netted.

Vines as thick as my arms were doing a lot of embracing too, hitching a lift up to the light. This one was unusual in that several birds’ nest ferns, perhaps mistaking them for trees, had settled on them.

Other vines, as thick as many of the trees, astonished me with their girth and height… and likely age.

As the track was muddy, my eyes were carefully cast down, so the canopy was not much observed. Just as well, or I might have missed these fungi, bravely breaking the green dominance with their fluted and flared cinnamon rays.

Surviving the Big Wet

May 30, 2022 by Fred Baker

Many of the plants in my low garden, in ground or in pots, are turning up their toes at the seemingly endless rain, like this lavender.

Yet other things, like these fungi, can take advantage of it.

My garden is flat, and the swamp it must have once been is evidenced by the next door property, still pools of brown water. The ducks and water hens don’t mind, as they can wade and swim at ease; even the kookaburrras like to fly down and splash about.

But I realise now I ought to have raised the whole area before installing these garden beds or placing large pots down there, so bad is the waterlogging.

So I depend on pots up on my decks, like these surprisingly generous cacti. Formerly called Zygocactus truncata, they now bear the fabulous name of Schlumbergera truncata.

Having survived being inundated at my old house, where again the deck was their home, they have now burst forth into delicate yet showy blooms.

Hardy and beautiful! My sort of flowering plant.

Artful Nature

January 3, 2022 by Fred Baker

Through burnt country, the water runs constantly, cool and clear in these mountain streams. Splashing over dark tessellated rock shelves, landing hard to fizz and spray sparkling drops into the shallow pool below. Such energy and action!

Yet higher up at Brushy Mountain camp that stream is small and steadily busy as it winds through ferns and lomandra, the pink of the new ferny foliage counterpointing the green.

There was pink in the new gum leaves too, but these clumps of pink trigger plants (Stylidium) won the day for me, as I had never seen them. Each flower has a column or trigger that releases when an insect lands, ensuring it will do the work of cross pollination. There was another variety nearby, of paler pink.

More monochrome than colour, the trunks of the Coachwood trees sang with pattern and subtlety.

One seemed to be adding ink drawing to its pastel range…

I was on the lookout for fungi, but saw very little on the ground, except for this small isolated clump, nestling shyly yellow like fleshy buttercups amongst the damp leaf litter.

It is always heartening to see how Nature makes use of even burnt logs. A veritable colony of tiny coffee and cream fungi had claimed this tree.

As we walked back to camp, a Goodenia guard of honour flanked the path with brightness and colour. A surprise, like so much in Werrikimbe.

I’ll be back…

Banksias and bijous

June 25, 2021 by Fred Baker

On such an exposed part of the Connors Track, the banksias grew low, their golden candles safe from being extinguished by the wind.

On the walk up to that headland other banksia species grew tall and woody, covered in an enormous number of dark seed cones like hairy hand grenades.

Other banksias in that coastal woodland were sized in between, sporting slim pale new candle flowers, older lemon and amber and woody ones all at once.

It is truly a banksia garden, all growing virtually on sand.

Around the Hungry Gate campground, hoary old paperbarks and strangely grown figs dominated, all reaching great heights just in sand.

On the walk, many tiny dainties graced the sandy banks, often making just one appearance. I had to be sharp to spot them; I am sure I missed many such jewels, as I only saw some on the way back.