Saturday 9th April was a field activity organised by the Sydney Fungal Studies Group Inc. The group met at Girrawheen Park and then split into two subgroups. I was in the smaller group that headed upstream to look between Bardwell Park and Bexley North.
Austroboletus lacunosus
There was a reasonable amount of fungi out, and surprisingly, a lot of it was different to what I had seen 4 days before.
One thing that was interesting was a small mycena like fungi that I had not spotted on the prior visit –
I am not sure what this tiny delicate species is. Perhaps they are a type of Hemimycena? These appeared identical to ones I had photographed the day before at Bola Creek. It does not appear in any fungi books.
We also saw a lot of Inky Caps out. It was good to photograph their changing forms. They are quite ephemeral – as their inky caps auto-digest –
On the way back, we passed a section containing some giant boletes – Phlebopus marginatus. Many of them were over 30 cm across! But they can grow to over 1 m across.
We also noticed some dung beetles rolling off little balls of dog poo –
Update (31 May 2016) – this dung beetle has been identified as Cephalodesmius armiger, a native species of dung beetle that is quite unusual. Male and female beetles form a permanent life long bond (they live for about a year), They have underground tunnels and can produce substitute dung balls out of leaf material in the absence of real dung. The balls are used as brood balls to house their larvae. The parent beetles also add food to the balls and can communicate with the young. See here.
We then arrived back at Girrawheen Park to meet up with the others and compare our findings.
I was curious about some of the fungi I had seen, so headed back the next day for another look. This time I caught the train to Bexley North and then walked all the way down the Two Valleys Track to Tempe.
More Inky Caps were out, and the old ones had almost gone –
In a grassy section, we had noticed a funny growth on the grass the previous day. We had taken a small sample and it looked like a slime mould. This time I was able to get some better photos –
Heading down towards Turrella, I found quite a few boletes out, including one that was conjoined – two separate stipes but with their caps merged together –
This is one bolete, that we were unable to work out the day before what species it was. There seemed to be quite a lot of it out at Wolli Creek.
Lower down, I was surprised and quite delighted to find a small cluster of red waxcaps out – a species of Hygrocybe. The tops of their caps suggest Hygrocybe miniata, but they have a yellow edge. Interesting.
Here are a few more photos –
More photos are online with my identification attempts – Saturday here, and Sunday here.