Rain brings out the Fungi, mould and some orchids

After the appalling dry of the last year March 2014 has brought measurable rain on 13 of the 28 days thus far.  Our total (still going up) is 65.2mm.  This has caused fungi to appear in fair profusion.  And a few other things.

To begin with the fungi.

These two rather adult-content-looking items were growing beside the Kambah Pool walk yesterday.  I wonder about Macrolepiota sp. but these were in a rather open area and from comments in Fuhrer that genus seems to favour forest.
I will take a punt that the next two images are Mycena sp. Top view ...
 .. and underside.
The next day (29/3/14) I snapped these at the start of Whiskers Creek Rd,
On the same date there were a couple of other species along the roadside:
This next is clearly a puffball, and I will take a punt on it being Pisolithus arhizus, the Horse Dung fungus.
This is clearly a bolete ...
 .. which rapidly stains blue when bruised.
I have included this revolting image of maggots as Fuhrer  says that Phlebotus is a favourite target of fungus flies being rapidly attacked.  This infestation occured 2 days after I first noticed the fungus
  I will pass completely on these next two specimens (3 images) .


When we took the dog for a walk at 7:30, still barely daylight, and humid but not yet raining, these white patches were very common along the upper creek.  However, my photo was garbage.
So I went back about 1500, when the light was better but it was raining.   I hardly found any of the organisms.  In the absence of any better ideas I will say they are some form of slime-mould!
I also found quite a few Eriochilus cucullatus: our first Autumn orchids!

Comments

Jeni at Northern Rivers Dreaming said…
Thanks so much for these photos. We just had exactly the same thing happen with a couple of Phlebotus we'd picked to photograph at home so we could identify them. We left them sitting on the bench outside and the next morning the cap of the larger one had entirely vanished under seething maggots. We're not going to get the stain out of the bench wood any time soon!
17 April 2014 at 09:07:00 GMT+10
Flabmeister said…
Insect damage is a general worry. Something got into tomatoes on a bench: fortunately the resulting soup dripped onto plastic. not the nearby furnishings.
17 April 2014 at 20:26:00 GMT+10
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