Types of fungal fruiting bodies - cup fungi
There are also what might best be described as "compound" cup fungi, which look like a number of cups stuck together. Two examples are the genera Cyttaria, where each "dimple" in the "golfball" can be thought of as a small [... more]
Australian National Botanic Gardens |
What's in this site and what isn't
The website introduces you to the basics of fungi that produce the striking (and easily visible) structures such as the mushrooms, puffballs, stinkhorns, polypores, truffles and so on. You saw a display of these in the opening page. These are the ... [... more]
Australian National Botanic Gardens |
The influences governing the distribution of species
Biogeography is the study of both the current distribution of living organisms and the reasons for those distributions. Mycogeography is the biogeography of fungi. Current plant and animal distributions around the world are the result of the ... [... more]
Australian National Botanic Gardens |
Coral & jelly fungi
This section contains macroscopic descriptions of the commonest types of fruiting bodies. The standard mushroom (stem, cap, gills) is familiar to everyone, but not all mushrooms have stems. Some species that grow on wood have caps that grow out ... [... more]
Australian National Botanic Gardens |
Truffle-like fungi - ascomycetes
In the ascomycete truffle-like fungi the asci may be spread throughout the interior of the fruiting body, embedded in firm tissue or be lined up along the walls of internal chambers. This unidentified species of Tuber , collected in the ... [... more]
Australian National Botanic Gardens |
Aboriginal use of fungi
An excellent source of information about this topic is the chapter by Arpad Kalotas in Fungi of Australia, Volume 1B and virtually all the material in this section is taken from there. For thousands of years Aboriginal fungal lore and knowledge ... [... more]
Australian National Botanic Gardens |
Coral and jelly fungi
, usually found on soil but sometimes on rotting wood, may be simple fleshy clubs or intricately branched coral-like forms in various colours (e.g. white, yellow, brown, orange, purple). Generally they are no more than a few centimetres in height ... [... more]
Australian National Botanic Gardens |
The cup fungi - and relatives
The most commonly seen larger ascomycete fruiting bodies are the ones known as the If you examined a cross-section of an apothecium under a microscope, you'd find the asci arranged vertically and making up much of the apothecium's upper surface, ... [... more]
Australian National Botanic Gardens |
Jelly fungi & Wood-ears
The irregularly shaped jelly fungi (such as the species of Tremella) have the basidia in the convoluted surfaces of the fruiting bodies. The basidia of the jelly fungi are septate along their long axes and have long, often weakly sinuous ... [... more]
Australian National Botanic Gardens |
Truffle-like fungi in Australia
Truffle-like fungi in Australia - one of several illustrated pages introducing Australian fungi. Terminology - truffle, truffle-like, false-truffle, hypogeous, sequestrate How many species are in Australia - and where do you find them? The ... [... more]
Australian National Botanic Gardens |
Flask fungi
These fungi produce their spores in tiny, generally globose, chambers (called perithecia) which are mostly under a couple of millimetres in diameter - often no more than a millimetre. At first, it might seem strange to include these fungi because ... [... more]
Australian National Botanic Gardens |
History of the study of Australian Fungi
The history of the study of fungi in Australia and the people involved. What follows is a highly abbreviated account of the progress in the study of Australian (macro)fungi in the years since European settlement in 1788. This account highlights ... [... more]
Australian National Botanic Gardens |
