I visited Sassafras Gully at Springwood on two trips recently.
The first trip was with Digi Dave and Don. We started down the track at Sassafras Gully Road and soon found ourselves in the rianforest at the bottom and amidst plenty of fungi. The more we looked, the more we saw. A lot of it was colourful – bright blue Entolomas and scarlet Hygrocybes. Yellow slime moulds… lots of nice stuff. One highlight was a log with three or four different slime moulds present on it. On that trip – we only went down to the junction of Sassafras Gully Creek and Glenbrook Creek and return the same way – back to Sassafras Gully Rd.
Don is a naturalist living at Springwood and is very keen on plants and bird watching. Looking out for fungi opens up a whole new kingdom for him. And slime moulds – another new kingdom!
I had a followup trip, two days later. This time I started higher up and walked down the Victory Track from Faulconbridge and continued on to Glenbrook Creek and then exited via Magdala Creek and Fairly Dell to the Springwood shops.
Here are some of the fungi –
Here are some of the slime moulds –
More photos from the days can be viewed on my website. 5 March here and 7 March here. Most have been identified.
Some very nice ones.
Cortinarius rotundisporus is a very distinctive metallic blue that develops yellow centre to the cap. The first I think is an Entoloma, not certain about the others, they have very different coloured stems to the first.
The slime mould below Arcyria denudata looks like the mycelia, top picture on p147 of Fuhrer.
Thanks Ken – you are correct about the ones labeled as “Cortinarius” being wrong. I think they all may be species of Entoloma (see Fuhrer p 68), or perhaps Entomola indigoticoumbrinum?
The other one you refer to – looks like a fungi, based on the irregular distribution, but when I look a the original and magnify it to 100% it doesn’t look like the mycena (p 147) from what I can see. It is very tiny – less than 1 mm in size. And it was on the same log as the other 3 or 4 slime moulds – all which look different.
Ken – worked out what that mystery one is, it is Hypocrea gelatinosa (see Gates and Ratkowsky p 225)