I finally found an hour in my day to escape into the bush I so love – to clear my mind of all the recent busyness while finding some fascinating fungi. There’s been a week or three of welcome moisture, bringing the forest under-story quickly back to life after a long dry spell over summer. It took a little while for me to adjust my head to see this new world, and find a few new surprises!
Yesterday I was going to go for a walk, but decided just lying down on the grass firebreak behind my property was what my mind and body needed – there’s nothing quite like strapping the planet to your back and watching the sky rotate over your head, even for a short time. After I’d relaxed and stretched, I looked around and the fungi above caught my eye a few meters away, punching it’s way up through the grass clearing.
Today I took my old doggy for a short stroll up into the woodlands, we both had our noses to the ground. These little fungi are fairly common and began tuning me into the hunt, travelling light with the Oly OM1 II and 60mm macro.
Another fairly common siting around home, I found these one’s in a little cluster. I was feeling lazy, these images aren’t stacked, taken at f8 they all have a fairly shallow depth of field and are pretty much straight off the in-camera jpeg with very little editing. A kind of “challenge” to myself to get it right in camera and save some time on the PC.
Another fairly common little ‘shroom among the lichen.
These two were a surprise, one I haven’t seen before! I was drawn slightly off the track when I found these, and once I’d seen one, I found quite a few in the area. Very dark green, almost black and velvety looking they were well disguised among the leaf litter on the forest floor. After a few flicks through “A Field Guide to Tasmanian Fungi” by Genevieve Gates & David Ratkowsky, I can not identify this one!
A cluster for fresh parasol’s bursting through the leaf litter and moss.
(coprinellus, coprinopsis or Coprinus)
Some fresh orange fingers reaching for the light (Clavulinopsis sulcata). Unfortunately the human need to head off to work rudely interrupted my pleasant fungi finding mind stream, but at a quick glance, it looks like it will be a cracker season!
TasView 