Fungi Group Foray MACEDON, SANATORIUM LAKE, 23 June 2013

摘要

The Juniors were great, their sharp eyes soon found lots of fungi for us to look at. We started off around the car park where the orange-gold caps of Flammulina velu-tipes clearly showed out, the caps were not so glutinous as often seen, but the dark base of the stem was very distinctive. A group of large Lepista nuda (Wood Blewit) was growing amongst a clump of Birch trees whose fallen leaves covered and blended in with the mauve-brown caps of the L. nuda. These were one of the few mycorrhizal fungi that we saw. They gain their nutrients from a symbiotic relationship with trees - their underground hyphae (very tiny tube-like threads) join up with tree roots. As a result the fungi gain the 'food' (carbohydrates (sugars) and other essential nutrients) they need and in return the trees gain a greater ability to absorb water and minerals such as nitrogen and phosphorous from the soil, and are protected from some pathogens, thus enabling the plant to flourish in the soil. In the same area, on dung, was Stro-pharia semiglobata, a saprotrophic fungus that gains its nutrients by breaking down dead organic matter.