I went up the mountains and joined Wendy for a very nice day in Sassafras Gully. This was one of my regular visits to see how the fungi was going, but also on this visit we experienced a wide range of the delights of Nature.
We left Springwood and started walking down Fairy Dell and into Magdala Creek. Compared to a week before, there was not too much fungi out.
We took our time looking carefully around for fungi, slime moulds and interesting plants.
At Glenbrook Creek, we paused for morning tea, and then continued on to the Lagoon. Juts before the lagoon, Wendy spotted a really nice Diamond Python that was sitting in a River Gum next to the track. This was a strikingly beautiful snake and it was happy to pose for photos. It didn’t seem too concerned at our presence.
At the Lagoon, we stopped for lunch. I had a swim in the pool while Wendy explored Glenbrook Creek upstream.
We then continued along the track walking up Sassafras Gully. On the way, we were lucky to spot a few Cordyceps fungi. These are always interesting to find. Their spores find there way inside a caterpillar and then start growing. As the fungus grows, a chemical is released that controls the development of the host, allowing the caterpillar to grow to a large size. Then for some reason, the fungus kills the host and emerges above the surface as a fruiting body.
Cordyceps robertsii
Another fungus that I photographed is also interesting. After putting the photo online on a Facebook Fungi Group, it is likely to be Amparoina spinosissima, which does not seem to be officially recorded in Australia before (but has been photographed before, including by me on a trip down Sassafras Gully last year).
Amparoina spinosissima
It was also interesting to spot a small log that we had photographed two weeks earlier. Then it had a few stinkhorns growing off it. The log had attached to it and large number of white “eggs”, the structures that the stinkhorns emerge from. We had left the log next to the track and when we spotted it again, we noticed that most of the eggs had “hatched” during the two week period, but there were also a few still fairly fresh.
We left the gully via the track that goes to Sassafras Gully Road and then walked back to Springwood.
More photos are online here.