Identifying mushrooms and fungi in the Adelaide Hills

MYSTERIOUS mushrooms and fantastic fungi such as Pixie’s Parasol, Jelly Baby and Lawyer’s Wig feature in a new Adelaide Hills field guide, published online this week.

The identification chart is a collaborative project between Natural Resources Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges and the Adelaide Fungal Studies Group.

State Herbarium honorary research associate Pam Catcheside said the whole project took two and a half years from start to finish.

“I’m happy to help to promote the fungi — which is a whole kingdom and very often very much overlooked — because they are so important so vital for life on Earth,” she said.

“So I think the more that is known about them, the more people will understand them and stop being so frightened of them.”

She was not surprised to learn two big rings of the introduced fungus “fly agaric” had emerged beneath oak trees on a property at Birdwood.

“They’re partners with a wide range of trees,” Mrs Catcheside said.

“The fungi go out and collect nutrients and water, for the benefit of them and the plant they are in association with. And the plant photosynthesises, provides the sugars, which of course provides the energy for the fungi to do all those things. So it is a beneficial partnership, both sides benefit.”

She said the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) had “such a very wide host range” it was getting into many of the native forests, which was a real concern because it may be ousting the native fungi,

“which all do their own particular jobs in keeping the forests healthy”.

But there was no way to get rid of them, because what you see on the surface is a very small part of the whole organism. “Under the ground there’s so much, you can’t get rid of them.”

Four-year-old Mae said the “red and white toadstools” looked good, but were poisonous.

“You don’t eat them,” she said.

“You’ll die if you eat them probably.”

Mum Caralyn Marsland said they looked “like something straight out of a whimsical fairy tale”.

“It reminds me of something out of an Enid Blyton book, like The Magic Faraway Tree,” she said.

The double-sided full-colour chart will soon be available in printed form. In the meantime, download the PDF from the Natural Resources website.

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