Bryophytes

Last weekend, Victoria's unofficial extra long weekend because of the melbourne Cup, we went down to the Otways to explore the wet forest.

Our main aim was to relocate the Thismia rodwayi that we found last year, which we did, and a specimen will be collected for the herbarium - and then we explored around the Forrest area for the following day or so. Then we went home to dry out.

We found some lovely plants and animals but these are some of the lichens and liverworts from that area. It was lovely to see the wet forest actually wet.

A feast of fungi

Visit to the Otways, Part 2. This time the fungi we found at Blanketleaf Picnic Ground yesterday - an unexpected bonanza. Even though we've had rain I hadn't expected the fungi to still be so prolific and varied. The IDs are suggestions only - I'm happy to be corrected.

Pretty Mouth Calostoma fuscum

Jellybaby Leotia lubrica

Black Earth Tongue Geoglossum  sp.

Coral Fungi

Coral Fungi

Pluteus sp.

?

Update: Galerina unicolor. Thanks Helen.

Snail's pace

I can't begin to explain how lovely it is to spend a day in the wet forest of the Otway Ranges. The tall dripping ferns, the fungi, the damp mulch, the sound of running water, moss, tall trees, birds calling, shrubs and herbs starting to flower, the solitude - all contribute to a wonderful environment. It's been raining this year for a change so the dampness is a true delight. I'm sure the flora and fauna are appreciating it as well.

We went down a walking track at Blanketleaf Picnic Ground north of Lorne and there was so much to see it took us more than an hour to go only about 200 metres in and back again. Interesting fungi was everywhere and that's what slowed us down the most. I'll post some photos of those later.

But Rosalind also found two snails, the rare Otway Snail that I've blogged about before here and one I hadn't seen before, a little Helicarion nigra.

It had a small glossy shell, too small to retract into. It is quite slug-like. Snail will know more than me but it seemed to me to be a primitive type of snail. We found it in moss on the ground on a damp south-facing slope in the forest and moved it to a piece of bark to get its portrait taken. The shell is horizontal and quite flat. I wonder if it's carnivorous like the Otway Snail.

A dainty moth

Tipanaea patulella (2), originally uploaded by boobook48.

We were meant to be searching for frogs around a dam at Bambra but I got distracted by the beautiful little white moths flying around the rushes and grass.

They were Tipanaea patulella. Apparently the caterpillars bore into the stem of rushes.

PS I tried out something new for this blog - I uploaded the photo and comments from my Flickr page. It was easy peasy. (Except I see that the original photo title comes up in tiny font underneath the photo which I don't think is really necessary, and the tags didn't come across either.)

PPS And I've just discovered that when you click on the photo to view large it takes you straight to my Flickr page where you have to click on the 'All sizes' option.

A bird's nest of a different kind

Several weeks ago we did a plant survey on roadside vegetation near Barwon Downs but as usual we got distracted by insects, birds and fungi. Rosalind found these tiny fungi cups on a very small stick. I photographed them and went back to photographing plants. When we saw the photos on the computer we realised that they were Bird's-nest Fungi (species unknown but possibly Nidula emodensis). If you look carefully at the second photo you can see the peridioles scattered on the wood, presumably by raindrops. I've never seen one before, and would love to see a fresh one. I didn't realise they were so small.

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.

A rare carnivore

OK, we saw a few other things at West Barwon Dam - we weren't entirely one-eyed (though we're good at that given that we live in Geelong, the home of the Cats).

We got quite distracted from the fungi at one stage when an Otway Snail was found crawling up a clay bank. (Do snails crawl?) It's a big snail, with a shiny black shell, and this one was fully stretched out. When we disturbed it it quickly tucked away its eyes so we had to wait a minute or two for a 'photo opportunity'. This snail, Victaphanta compacta, is rare and Endangered, is found only in this rainforest and is carnivorous (it eats worms and other snails). We were amazed at how big its foot was.

Touring the coast

Last weekend I was a tourist - in my own patch. Four of us explored some of the Otway National Park, the Great Ocean Road near Port Campbell and the volcanic landscape at Camperdown and Colac. The weather was calm, warm and sunny, we saw lots of tourists, we saw some beautiful farming country, ferny gullies, tall forests and spectacular landscapes. We were in one of the most popular tourist destinations in Australia.

But it was only at The Twelve Apostles, Loch Ard and London Bridge that we really felt like we were in a crowd. There are lots of places that are not visited by the bulk of the tourists and in a number of spots we were the only people there.

One of the quiet places was Moonlight Head, and it was in the nearby cemetery that we found the Twisted Sun Orchid Thelymitra flexuosa. It's reluctant to flower, even on warm days, but we were lucky to find it open. There were a lot of heath plants coming up to flower and flowering in the mown sections of the cemetery and it's well worth a visit. And so is Moonlight Head as well -it's one of the highest cliffs on the coastline.

Another sun orchid was flowering at London Bridge. Metallic Sun Orchid Thelymitra epipactoides was growing next to a path and I stopped to take its photo - and discovered that someone had broken it off and it was just propped up in the surrounding foliage. At that stage I didn't know what it was, so I decided to take it with me back to the car where I had a reference book - and felt decidedly guilty as we passed groups of tourists and National Park staff disguised as tourists. I had to hide it under my shirt! Me, in court, "No way! I didn't pick it - it was just lying there. Really." Anyway, it turned out to be an Endangered species. Which made it even worse than I'd imagined. It is a very beautiful orchid that grows on the exposed cliff tops in Port Campbell National Park.

And just for a change of scene, this was my lunch on Sunday. A delightful Fetta Salad, eaten in the garden at the Timboon Farmhouse Cheese. It looked too good to eat but was delicious. We bought a jar of the fetta so we could relive the taste at home.

Black beauty

Weeaproinah, one of the wettest places in Victoria, and home of the Otway Fly. No, not a fly, a Fly - a treetop walk over a rainforest gully in the beautiful Otway Ranges.

It is also the home of the Otway Snail. We found the snail today while we were surveying a property next to the Fly, listing the plants, insects, birds and mammals. The Black Otway Snail Victaphanta compacta is carnivorous (it eats other snails, worms and insect larvae apparently). It's also rare and endangered. If they're rare it's possibly not because of logging, farming or plantations, but from natural causes, because we found dozens of snail shells on the forest floor. Some creature gathers them into one place and breaks open the shell to eat them. What could it be? A bird sitting on a branch above? A bush rat? A bandicoot? We had no idea.

Save the platypus

A textile artist in the Otway Ranges posts about her beautiful fabric art and occasionally her environment. The two links lead to a campaign to protect the home of the platypus.

http://origidij.blogspot.com/
http://endangeredwaterways.blogspot.com/2007/11/voice-of-platypus.html