Pipeline Track Fungi - 3rd May 2008

This is the best time of year for fungi, but the dry weather appears to have minimised their appearance so far. However, there were a few interesting ones along the Pipeline Track yesterday.

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Unidentified so far. Some resemblance to Cuphocybe species.

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Unidentified so far.

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Bracket fungus.

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This is Amanita muscaria, the Fly Agaric. It's an introduced species from the northern hemisphere, and is poisonous. It is now classified in the same genus as the Death Cap A. phalloides. You wouldn't be tempted to eat something that looked like this though would you? It might has well have "poison" written on it. These are quite prolific at a particular point along the track, and there are a lot of them growing underneath the leaf litter.

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Quite near to the obvious, full-grown A. muscaria, there were some other fungi growing. Looking closely at these however, it appears they are earlier stages in the appearance of A. muscaria. You can just see a pinky-coloured material where the warty surface has started to split apart.

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Again in this more fully-rounded fungus, there's the hint of pink showing through beneath the warty white surface. I'm assuming the underlying structure just keeps growing and then the white warts split apart and end up scattered across the red surface.