The Anemone Fungus

Can't see the plants for the birds? Your birding will be far more meaningful, particularly, once the plant-bird associations gel. Somebody find me a botanist!!
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Rod Hobson
Posts: 509
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 8:03 am

The Anemone Fungus

Post by Rod Hobson »

Folks,

On Sunday morning, 07.02. 2010 I was walking in the parkland abutting Kitchener Street in Toowoomba. Near the corner of Herries and Kitchener Street I found several of the very bizarre and colourful Anemone Fungus, Aseroe rubra (Phallaceae), also known as the Star or Stinkhorn Fungus. The common names will give you a good indication of this fungus' general appearance. The small company of about a dozen individuals that I located on Sunday were growing in wood mulch under low shrubs; an ideal situation for this not uncommon species.

The Anemone Fungus has a wide distribution in eastern Australia being found from south-eastern Queensland through New South Wales to eastern Victoria and Tasmania. It is also known from some south Pacific Islands. In 1829 it raised its baroque head in Kew Gardens having been accidentally introduced there in potting mix. It has likewise been transported to California where it is now established. This fungus is a saprotroph of decomposing vegetative matter and especially likes wood chip mulch in ornamental gardens.

This fungus has an interesting history, as it was the first fungus described from Australia. Jacques Labillardiere (1755-1834), a member of the D'Entrecasteaux Expedition collected the Anemone Fungus at Recherche Bay in southern Tasmania on the 1st May 1792 and described the fungus in 1800.

It's well worth a look at this unusual and historically interesting fungus if you get a chance but it won't last long now that the sunny days are back and the rain has gone.

Regards,
Rod Hobson
Rod Hobson
Posts: 509
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2006 8:03 am

Toowoomba Fungi-rama

Post by Rod Hobson »

Folks,

I was certainly somewhat premature in my forecast for sunny days ahead in my posting of 9th. February. As I sit here our western towns are being buffeted by record floods and the rain is bucketing down in Toowoomba, which has been the case for several days now. As a small consolation though, fungi are popping up all over the place to celebrate this big wet.

I've just returned from a long and sodden walk into Queens Park specifically to look for fungi. This park is a treasure trove for an amateur mycologist, especially as it has large numbers of richly mulched ornamental trees and flower beds. Such situations are much beloved by fungi especially the order Phallales that contains the oddly misshapen, un-mushroom like stinkhorn fungi. These are so called as, aside to their odd and garish structures, they exude mucilaginous and foetid-smelling spore masses that attract flies that, in turn, effect dispersal of the stinkhorn's spores.

Today the Anemone Fungus (Aseroe rubra) was about in its hundreds from the gelatinous 'egg' stage to mature and senescent individuals. Other Phallales out in slightly fewer numbers but still quite numerous were the stinkhorn Lysurus mokusin (no common name) and the somewhat indelicately but aptly named Phallus rubicundus. Other 'conventional' fungi in a host of colours from canary yellow to some electric blues and scarlet reds added to the riot of species sequestered in Queens Park today.

It's well worth braving the elements for a look at these fungi; you might get cold, you'll likely get very wet but you certainly won't come away disappointed by these wondrous life forms.

Get out there.

Regards,
Rod Hobson
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