Australian Fungi

[sean freeman]

I put this one in really for fun more than anything else I am calling it Phellinus badius but really I am only confident that it is Phellinus sp.

 

It is the largest single (Phellinus) conk I have personally found it was 280-290mm high and from its point of attachment to the tree out to the rim of the spore bearing surface was 400mm, I am not sure how much it weighed but guessing around 5-7kg (I have never thought to carry a set of scales with me when assessing trees perhaps I will consider it next time I'm in the tropics!)

 

I wish we'd had a saw or something capable of cutting into this thing to look at the cross section...I suspect it will be gone by the time I get back up there in three weeks.

 

The conk was on the ground but I am assuming it had fallen off a horizontal Banyan fig limb that was very badly decayed directly above its resting place on the ground.

[David Humphries]

That certainly looks one 'Badass' fung.

 

You may need a tungsten blade to get through that one.

 

Be interesting if you do get the opportunity to open it up for the tube layers etc.....

 

 

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[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

A quite different looking fungal fruiting body with a smaller pore size than the last two examples.

 

Cramp balls, or King Alfred's cakes ~ Daldinia concentrica looking quite purple in these shots not the typical black outer layer commonly seen in the photographs in many ID books. Growing here on stubs on a Banyan fig ~ Ficus benghalensis in North Queensland.

 

In the first picture you can see a darker older fruiting body peeking around the edge of the stub

 

The sooty layer on the surface of the stub is formed by the black spores being released by the fruiting body...in the cross section you can clearly see where is name concentrica comes from:sneaky2:

 

Daldinia concentrica belongs to the family Xylariaceae an in the same genera as another Ascomycetes fungi Hypoxylon, which will I suspect be familiar to many of you, and degrading wood tissues as a soft rot.

 

the colouration is just imaturity i feel, see a brown version here next to black ones. Theres 7 species of Daldinia here in the U.k as far as im aware, though dont know just how fine the differences are between them. An important fingi in the forests here, helping shear of old branches due for abscission, especialy on ash

 

thats a cracking conk!

[sean freeman]

Here are some lovely little fruiting bodies of the one of the less well known Ganoderma sp, this one is Ganoderma cupreum syn Ganoderma chalceum.

 

These fruiting bodies were popping up all over, on the remains of the surface roots of a dead Mango tree ~ Mangifera indica

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

loving this thread, top draw sean

[sean freeman]

Phellinus robustus syn Fomes robustus...the pictures show old brackets really quite desicated cracking and dark as well as younger brackets typical in their form.

 

This Phellinus species is very common in both native bush and urban trees, it is not what I would consider to be an extremely agressive decay fungi (I'll show some cross sections of a felled Eucalyptus with many years of battle between fungi and tree in the next post) however (in my experience) it certainly can cause an extensive white pocket rot in the heart wood.

 

All the brackets were formed on declining Acacia sp (wattles)

[sean freeman]

Sections through the stem showing the white rot decay of Phellinus robustus on a Poplar gum ~Eucalyptus platyphylla.

 

The fungi has colonised tissues throughout the heart wood but has found the barrier zone (wall 4 in the CODIT model) a greater challenge, it has been breached in a number of places evident on the standing tree by the fruiting bodies.

 

In my experience Eucs with this wood decay fungi growing within them stay upright for many years often decades before failing, even in this excessively damaged tree (by construction works in the early 1980's) a ring of sound and functional wood was still being produced.

[David Humphries]

Cross sectional shots are well appreciated sean, thanks

 

 

 

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[sean freeman]

As I have pointed out in this thread there are some interesting variations between the fungi we find here in Oz…specifically here in Queensland…and fungi encountered in Europe and even in cooler climate zones of Australia.

 

This next one is a great example of that; Ganoderma lucidum.

 

For many, many years I was incorrectly calling these fungi Ganoderma resinaceum, partly because of the preponderance of that fungi in the literature discussing Ganoderma sp, and partly because I had not at that time read any text specifically dealing with Queensland wood decay fungi.

 

In Queensland we do not have any records of G. resinaceum it is a fungi that occurs in colder climates of Victoria and Tasmania but not here in the tropics.

 

Just to confuse matters even more…we do have two other fungi which have macroscopic similarities to G. lucidum but microscopic differences…hence the nomenclature “cf” (confer or compare with).

 

I want to be very clear that without training in the use of microscopes and without access to microscopic confirmation I can only make suggestions about the accurate ID of the fungi in the pictures below; what I think is Ganoderma lucidum might well actually be Ganoderma cf lucidum. The other Ganoderma sp which has some similarities to G. lucidum at least during the immature stages is Ganoderma P.Karsten species.

 

So having thrown all that into the mix here are some pics of what I believe to be G. lucidum, a wood decay fungi that I my experience is like Phellinus robusta in that it does not easily breach the barrier zone when that active chemical and physical response to dysfunction is triggered within the wood tissues of the tree.

 

The fruiting bodies were found growing on Delonix regia , Ficus benjamina, Mangifera indica and Acacia sp...as I am sure you guys are aware Ganoderma sp are fungi that can and do colonise both native trees and exotics.

 

Close ups to follow...

[sean freeman]

Some close up shots of Ganoderma lucidum found growing on a small Mango ~ Mangifera indica except the cross section (apologies about the poor quality of the shot its from a few years back) which was growing on a dead Poinciana ~ Delonix regia