{"id":50547,"date":"2021-01-23T17:33:15","date_gmt":"2021-01-23T07:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.david-noble.net\/blog\/?p=50547"},"modified":"2024-02-20T21:29:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T11:29:00","slug":"fairy-lanterns-in-megalong-17-january-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/david-noble.net\/blog\/?p=50547","title":{"rendered":"Fairy Lanterns in Megalong – 17 January 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"

I headed up to Springwood and met Wendy and then Don and we drove in Wendy’s car to Blackheath and then down to Megalong to look for Fairy Lanterns. A friend, Greg, had recently posted some photos of these unusual plants on his Facebook page. So we knew they would be in flower. I had previously seen one of the species before – back in April 2015 on a field trip with the Sydney Fungal Studies Group Inc<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Fairy Lanterns are the flowers of the genus Thismia<\/em>. These are very strange plants. They grow underground and obtain all their nutrients from a fungal partner. The fungal partner is also in a mycorrhizal relationship with another plant – in this case, a vine that often grows in the rainforest. <\/p>\n

When there are good conditions for fungal fruiting – just after lots of rain, then as fungi appear above the ground, the flowers of the Thismia<\/em> also appear in the leaf litter. The flowers are very small and would be easy to overlook.<\/p>\n

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Often the flowers appear in a small cluster – which suggests they may all be connected underground to the one plant.<\/p>\n

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On our visit, we were met by Greg and his daughter Eli, which proved to be very good – as I don’t think we would have found the flowers by ourselves.<\/p>\n

There are two spices of Thismia which are found in Megalong. One has been known for a while – Thismia hillii<\/em>. The second is Thismia megalongensis<\/em>, which was only found about 6 years ago, and so far has only been found in Megalong. Greg was one of the authors of the original paper that described the species<\/a>. Every year since they were discovered, Greg has made field trips and seen the flowers appear each season. They seem to flower anytime between December and May – depending on rain. Greg told us the flowers are fertilised by a fungal gnat.<\/p>\n

These ones are Thismia megalongensis –\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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And these are Thismia hillii<\/em> –<\/p>\n

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The T hillii<\/em> are more salmon coloured than the T megalongensis, <\/em>and they lack a “bristle” from the top of the flower that the T megalongensis <\/em>has. On our visit, we found far fewer T hillii <\/em>than\u00a0T megalongensis.<\/em><\/p>\n

We also found some fruiting bodies –<\/p>\n

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I had seen one of these before on a fungi photography visit<\/a> but had not realised what it was until Greg suggested it was likely to be a Thismia fruit.<\/p>\n

As well as the Thismia<\/em>, we did see a number of species of fungi –<\/p>\n

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The Thismia<\/em> are really extraordinary plants and seeing two species and so many at different stages was a rare privilege. Many thanks to Greg for showing us where to look.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I headed up to Springwood and met Wendy and then Don and we drove in Wendy’s car to Blackheath and then down to Megalong to look for Fairy Lanterns. A friend, Greg, had recently posted some photos of these unusual … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,123],"tags":[952,571,2583,953],"class_list":["post-50547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blue-mountains","category-wildflowers","tag-coachwood-glen","tag-megalong","tag-thismia-hillii","tag-thismia-megalongensis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/david-noble.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/david-noble.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/david-noble.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/david-noble.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/david-noble.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50547"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/david-noble.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94303,"href":"http:\/\/david-noble.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50547\/revisions\/94303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/david-noble.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/david-noble.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/david-noble.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}