FUNGAL FORAYS 

At the end of autumn this year several of us enjoyed excursions to different bush reserves. 
At the end of May we visited Hamman’s Bush, north of Leongatha. 
This reserve of 20ha on Wild Dog Valley Road is a wet forest of trees, mid-storey and understorey plants and, in the right season, an abundance of fungi.
 
One genus commonly found is Mycena, a large genus of minute  to medium sized mushrooms which inhabit litter and wood.      Caps vary in shape from plane to convex or bell-shaped.      
Gills  usually white and stems slender. 
Mycenas generally fruit in large colonies and produce white spore prints.    
 
Then, in the first week of June,
the Foster Branch went on a fungal foray instead of a working bee at Cement  Hill.                  
Lots of happy photographers spent a very pleasant afternoon.
 
 
This Austroboletus species is one that we found.
Walking along Biddy's Track at Wilsons Prom the following week,
more treasures were revealed: Coral, Jelly and Basket fungi.    
 
 
In the litter under Coast Tea-tree was this beautiful smooth yellow Clavaria amoena. 
 
 
On dead branches we found this Jelly fungus, Tremella mesenterica.
 
 
This strange object is a Lattice or basket Fungus, Ileadictyon cibarium.
It was growing in the garden bed mulch beside the toilet block.
 

Bruce Fuhrer wrote A field guide to Australian Fungi, an excellent book that made me want to go out and look for more, especially unusual fungi. 
I have spent hours pouring through his book and trying to identify all the fungi that I photographed. 
It was a considerable relief to find that many fungi can only be identified as far as genus, there are thousands of unnamed species out there.                                                                                         Mary Ellis