This was my next trip in my regular series of walk down Sassafras Gully to record and photograph the fungi. I was hoping for a lot of colourful waxcaps to be out, especially after many good finds in areas close to Sydney after the recent rain. And rain records for Springwood were quite good. However, Sassafras Gully, this season, has shown quite a bit of reluctance in producing abundant fungi when compared to last year. Nevertheless, I did manage to find some interesting species.
Perhaps Humidicutis rosella
One fungus I found, and I use the singular because I only found one of them’ was a rather large pink waxcap. In form, it resembled the fairly common purple waxcap – Porpolomopsis lewelliniae. it was a similar size and had a split cap. But there are no pink coloured waxcaps like this in Australian fungi books or waxcap keys. To try and find what it was, after asking local experts, I looked at some New Zealand sites like the excellent Hidden Forest and found one species that seemed to match – Humidicutis rosella. So that is perhaps what this one is. It seems to have been found in Austrailia once before.
As well as this “new” strange fungus, I also found a lot of orange/brown and yellow/red waxcaps – similar to what I found last year and I have not work out what they are.
On this trip, I entered the gully via the track at Sassafras Gully Road and left via Magdala Creek and Fairy Dell.
Here are some more waxcaps that I found –
And some of the other fungi –
More photos from the day can be found online on my website here.