Toothed Jelly

After a week of heavy rain Valda and I headed down the coast to one of our favourite spots, Blanket Leaf Picnic Ground north of Lorne. Our goal? Fungi.

The Great Otway National Park and other reserves in the Otway Ranges protect an astonishing suite of fungi, ferns and flora but it can be hard to find them because of inaccessibility. Especially if you are 'of a certain age'. Blanket Leaf PG appeals because there is a path through a wet forest of treeferns, eucalypts (and Blanket Leaf Bedfordia arborescens) leading to Cora Lynn Cascades and beyond, and the forest floor is thick with lovely wet mulch, mosses and lichens, fallen timber and smaller ferns and plants.

We found lots of fungi and we're still trying to identify most of them. Fungi can be frustrating, but they are mighty interesting. I do enjoy the process but inevitably find that we've failed to take note of or photograph the crucial identifying feature!!

But this is one I can identify and it's a beauty. It's a Toothed Jelly Pseudohydnum gelatinosum. I'd never seen one before. Unfortunately I had to resort to using the flash because in the gloom I couldn't tweak the camera settings to get a decent depth of field or decent shutter speed so the colours here are a little blown out but you can see how beautiful it is. And also unfortunately, the entry in Fungi Down Under states that it 'is very jelly-like and shivers when touched' and I never touched it!

Now... on to the other 25 species. Where's my Fuhrer?

Ferns 101

When I was growing up I only knew two ferns, the Maidenhair (Adiantum aethiopicum) and Bracken (Pteridium esculentum). Both grew in the sheltered bush on our property and bracken grew in the open paddocks as well. We kids headed for the bracken clumps because we knew that we would find rabbit warrens there and in the pre-mixamytosis days of the 1950s we made a bit of pocket money trapping and ferreting for rabbits.

But that's another story. This blog is about ferns. About my ignorance of same. Over the years I have managed to build up a bit of knowledge about flowering plants, insects and birds. But ferns? No. Nothing. I've been on excursions in the Otways with experts and on field trips with knowledgeable amateurs. I've checked my own references and the internet after taking photos of ferns, in an attempt to identify what I've seen, and failed. Is it really so hard?

I've had a few successes. I now think I recognise the Screw Fern, the Kangaroo Fern, Coral Fern, Mother Shield-Fern, Pacific Azolla, Sickle Fern and Nardoo. But then I lose confidence when I'm faced with a choice: Is it a Mother Shield-fern or a Bristly Shield-fern? Is this a Rough Tree-fern of a Soft Tree-fern?

My knowledge of ferns was put to the test yesterday when we explored some of the delightful tall trees and ferny understories of forested areas near Beech Forest in the Otway Ranges. You go into sensory overload in these forests with the smells, the sounds and beauty in abundance.

Kangaroo Fern Microsorum pustulatum

Turtons Track, Otway Ranges

Aire River

Spring fungi in the damp forest

When we were in the Otways looking for the Thismia last weekend (see last blog) we found quite a few different types of fungi as well. The mulch was damp, it was shady and there were quite a few understory shrubs and ferns present as well. In fact there was so much fungi there that it made me wonder why I haven't done more 'fungi forays' at this time of the year.

The first is a small stemmed black cup fungi, only a centimetre or two wide, possibly Plectania (or Peziza). We found quite a lot of this, often completely covered in mulch.

In an open but shaded area next to a path we found a beautiful coral fungus in various shades of pink and deep purple. It's possibly a Clavaria. The insects seem to like it as well. My friend Polly thinks it could be Clavaria zollingeri which 'is usually found amongst decaying litter under tree-ferns' (Fuhrer) - which this one was.

The tiny blue Chlorociboria was growing on a piece of stick in the mulch. Apparently one species stains the wood blue and another doesn't. We didn't look that closely - it was hard to concentrate on the fungi when the Thismia was claiming our attention.

PS A friend has just forwarded me a photo she took on the day and it definitely shows blue staining on the wood so I think it's a safe bet that it is C. aeruginascens.

Looking for a needle in the haystack

They said it was impossible. 'Good luck', they said. 'Best of British luck.' But we pressed on.

Our plan was to search for a Fairy Lantern Thismia rodwayi in the wet forests of Great Otway National Park. Rosalind reasoned that because it grows in Tasmania and eastern Victoria it was a possibility that it would also be present in the Otways, given that Victoria and Tasmania were connected by a land bridge only 15 000 years ago. So she organised a bunch of us to go down there last weekend. It's a very big park but the search technique for this plant is to each take a one-square metre quadrat (that's one square metre!), carefully lift of the mulch and look underneath for this tiny plant. It might be red, but it's only a centimetre of two high. If no Thismia was present we moved on to another quadrat.

At our second site we were successful. It's a beautiful and unusual plant, aptly named Fairy Lantern. We found eleven plants in all, over two days. Naturally we were very excited. It was all good fun.

The first image is of an immature plant, the second is mature.

More bush creatures

This beautiful little Lauxaniidae fly was on a bush-pea at Blanket Leaf picnic ground in the Otways - I think it's Pultenaea mollis and the little yellow slime worm was under the mulch.

Small delights

The Great Otway National Park is big, very big, and diverse. Last weekend we explored some of the wet forest areas. These are some of the small beetles we saw. The first is a Scarab beetle, the Eucalyptus Chafer Xylonichus eucalypti. I don't know identity of the other two as yet. The butterfly is a Forest Brown Argynnina cryila.

Update: The second beetle is a darkling beetle Lepispilus rotundicollis, the red and black insect is a Lycid beetle.