
Calendar
June
Mon 10 Deadline for Calgaroo news and articles
Wed 12 Propagation at Bidjiwong Community Nursery 10am to 1 pm
Sat 22 2-4pm Bi-monthly Meeting at Gumnut Hall Gumnut Place. Keith Muir from Colong Foundation talking about Gardens of Stone
July
Mon 8 Deadline for Calgaroo news and articles
Wed 10 Propagation at Bidjiwong Community Nursery 10am to 1 pm
Aug
Wed 14 Propagation at Bidjiwong Community Nursery 10am to 1 pm
Gardens of Stone
The Colong Foundation and the Gardens of Stone Focus of our meeting on 22nd June 2019
The Colong Foundation is Australia’s longest-serving community advocate for wilderness. It is the successor to Myles Dunphy’s National Parks and Primitive Areas Council, and was instrumental in the preservation and establishment of the areas such as the Blue Mountains and the Border Ranges National Parks. The Foundation continues this work advocating for the permanent preservation of other unique areas of wilderness.

For our June meeting, Keith Muir, the long-standing executive director of the Colong Foundation will be the guest speaker. Prior to joining the Colong Foundation, Keith had worked for the Total Environment Centre, so he has been extremely important in the efforts to protect more of the wilderness areas in the state. In particularly he will be talking about one high-priority project to enlarge the national park areas just west of the Blue Mountains. This area contains unique rock pagoda formations amongst the rugged hills and deep valleys.
The Gardens of Stone has almost as many rare plants and animals and endangered ecosystems as the rest of the Blue Mountains put together, all living in this spectacular pagoda landscape of rock pinnacles, canyons, cliffs, forests, heaths and wetlands.. The Gardens of Stone National Park contains some of these rock formations, but much of the area still remains under threat from mining and development. Come and here about this fascinating area.
FUNGAL FIELD STUDY, WENTWORTH COMMON, Sydney Olympic Park, 11th May, 2019
Coordinators: Elma & Ray Kearney
GPS: S 33° 50.271 E 151° 04.418; Members and visitors in attendance: 16
The weather had been dry and windy while cool temperatures were typically mid-autumn. Fungi fruiting was well below optimum and was confirmed by this field study. We were gladly joined by enthusiastic members of the Parramatta Hills branch of the Australian Plant Society. Leading the group was Tina Hsu, Ecology Project Officer, Sydney Olympic Park Authority (SOPA). We are grateful to Tina who not only guided us through the different habitats but arranged all-day free parking passes for attendees.
Ray and Elma had a previous meeting with Tina and Jenny O’Meara (Ecology Manager, SOPA) on 15.3.19 at Wentworth Common reserve when conditions of prior rain were much more favourable to the fruiting of fungi. Some species were recorded then by Elma and Ray and are added to the much fewer collections/recordings on the 11.5.19. The following Report and species list are a composite record of both visits.
Species recorded were from a range of genera and groups e.g. Amanita, Calocera, Campanella, Claviceps (ergot), Collybia, Coprinopsis, Dacryopinax, Fomes, Ganoderma, Geastrum, Gymnopilus, Hexagonia, Inocybe, Laccaria, Macrolepiota, Marasmius, Mycena, Phallus, Pisolithus, Postia, Schizophyllum, Scleroderma, Stereum (Xylobolus), Trametes and Xerula among others.
Rather than just provide a series of specimen photos with names we have decided to emphasize the interdependency of fungi and to raise mycological questions based on keen observations and originality of ideas to try to engender a broader mycological objective than simply a gallery of photos.
The Habitat
Sydney Olympic Park (SOP) provides habitat for over 250 native animal species. A quarter of all bird species found in Australia have been recorded at the Park, as well as many species of amphibians, frogs, reptiles, mammals and fish.
SOP includes approximately 200 hectares of estuarine and freshwater wetlands, which support a high diversity of native plant species. Wentworth Common is one of the primary habitats where the endangered bell frog habitat had been specifically conserved or constructed to promote the long-term viability of the site’s population. Sites visited included casuarina habitats around the restricted bell-frog lagoon and adjacent bushlands.
Stinkhorn Phallus (Dictyophora) rubicundus –
(*very toxic to dogs)

The stem has a high content of e.g., manganese, iron and potassium. Flies are attracted by the mal-odour but when their feet touch the brown, spore-laden mass (gleba), the taste-sensors in the feet detect sweetness. The vibration by the fly’s proboscis causes the gleba gel to change to a liquid (sol). Spores are siphoned up and dispersed by the fly. The sol reverts to a gel when vibration ceases. This stinkhorn is not mycorrhizal but is common in woodchips and grass verges. The ‘egg’ has a gel below the outer coat and is important in creating an osmotic differential with moisture to ‘pump’ up the fruiting structure.
Entomopathogenic fungi.
Keenly observant attendees noted the large number of empty shells left by cicadas, after the nymph had climbed partly up the fine-mesh wall barrier around the bell-frog ponds. Beyond the mesh barriers were lines of mature Casuarina cunninghamiana. The question arose why so many cicadas have escaped colonization e.g. by parasitic Isaria cicadae or an undescribed species of Cordyceps found in Lane Cove See below.
Photos, taken in Lane Cove, show an undescribed species of entomopathogenic fungus, ‘cordyceps’, infecting the final underground nymph stage of a species of cicada. Two different cicada species were found to be susceptible to such infection in Lane Cove.

Grown in the laboratory the parasitic fungus was shown to have anti-tumour properties. Cordycepin ( 3′- Deoxyadenosine) was detected among other actives in the fungal extracts.
A quick survey beside the walls with cicada shells at Wentworth Common failed to disclose any stroma of infected ground nymphs.

Such is certainly partly due to the time of the year being unfavourable for the emergence of nymphs, which is usually in mid-summer. How a nymph succumbs to the parasitic fungus when the nymph reaches the surface (before metamorphosis) to allow the dispersal of spores from the fungal stroma, is largely unknown. Cordycepin which inhibits protein synthesis by blocking mRNA transcription is likely to have a role.
Another species of parasitic fungus is Isaria (Paecilomyces) cicadae which is quite common in rainforests in the Blue Mountains region.

The photo (above) by Elma (2013 Eureka prize awardee) shows growth stages 12 days apart. Again, the fungus grows upwards, against gravity, after the cicada nymph is killed, at ground surface, before the nymph would have emerged to metamorphose into the final stage of the cicada.
That so many nymphs at the Wentworth Common habitat had reached maturity raises many questions.
- Do the casuarina trees, known to affect mycelium of certain fungi in the rhizosphere also suppress these enteropathogenic fungi?
- Casuarina trees are found not to produce ectomycorrhizae while formation of arbuscular mycorrhizae and cluster roots in Casuarina cunninghamiana seedlings are dependent on supply of phosphorus. Casuarina cunninghamiana occurs naturally along stream and riverbanks. Cluster roots may be advantageous at these sites but, being near water, is unlikely to be favourable to mycorrhizal formation and activity.
- Casuarina root exudates are substances released that show a significant role in mediating the plantmicrobe/ fungi interactions in soil. Any role here?
- Nocturnal birds (e.g., Tawny Frogmouth) have been recorded in Lane Cove by Ray and Elma feeding cicada nymph to fledglings in trees, including casuarinas. See photo above (10.12.18)
The complex ecology of the cicada in terms of the factors affecting its survival in the Wentworth Common casuarina habitat, from a mycological perspective, is of interest, including a possible absence of these pathogenic fungi.
Schizophyllum commune

The basidiomycetous fungus S. commune is emerging as one of the important agents of sinusitis. Cases of S. commune infections also include allergic pulmonary disease, fungus ball in the lung, chronic lung disease, ulcerative lesions of the hard palate, nail infection and atypical meningitis. Though infections are rare, care should be undertaken in handling dead wood on which this fungus grows. It has recently attracted the pharmaceutical industry for its immune-modulatory, antifungal, anti-neoplastic and anti-viral activities. The species has been recorded at Wentworth Common.
Pisolithus arhizus (previously P. tinctorius)
An unusual earthball because its gleba (the spore bearing tissue mass in puffballs and their relatives) is composed of small peridioles (small divisions of the gleba having a separate wall) and displays a beautiful pattern. The young peridioles are white/yellow and move up the mushroom as they mature.

The fruiting bodies of older specimens become distorted and can be mistaken for anything from animal faeces to decomposing tree stumps. Despite its unsightly appearance, this earthball is used to dye wool, thus earning it the common name, “Dyeball.” The fungus is also prized by foresters for its ability to form robust mycorrhizas in extremely poor soil conditions.
Old peridioles at the top are full of mature spores. It survives bushfires. The broken specimen below, has had its spores scattered by, for example, a bird with a pointed bill such as, a common White Ibis. Recorded in several locations in Wentworth Common.
Selection of Other Specimens from Wentworth Common
Trametes coccinea (aka. Pycnoporus coccineus)

The fruiting bodies of this polypore genus look like vivid reddish-orange brackets and are widespread on dead wood. In Australia there are two species – Trametes coccinea and Trametes sanguineus, with overlapping distributions. Moreover, the two species are similar in appearance, so without specimens there will be doubt as to which species is meant in any particular account. One or other Trametes is used medicinally in a variety of ways by desert Aborigines – “sucked to cure sore mouths”, rubbed inside the mouths of babies with oral thrush, rubbed on sore lips. It has also been used as a teething ring. Out of curiosity, and after hearing of the Aboriginal use of this fungus, one person in Canberra chewed on a Trametes specimen to see if it would have any effect on a small mouth ulcer. The ulcer soon disappeared, so at least the fungus had no detrimental effect. Of course, in this case, there is still the question of whether chewing the fungus cured the ulcer or whether its disappearance was coincidental. Two antibiotic compounds have been found in Trametes coccinea.
Campanella junghuhnii
The genus name ‘Campanella’ means literally ‘little bells’.

Geastrum saccatum – Earth Star

Geastrum are saprobic – it derives its nutrition from the dead remains of other organisms. In other words it is a decomposer. It grows alone or gregariously under hardwoods or conifers; often appearing around stumps; spring through autumn (over winter in warmer climates). It is widely distributed. There are several similar species which are difficult to distinguish. This specimen from Wentworth Common was very dry due to weather conditions.
April APS Parramatta & Hills Meeting
Elma and Ray Kearney provided a talk on fungi They are investigating the relationship between the fungi and local plants and animals. They have discovered that most native ground orchids cannot complete their life cycle without part of it involving a fungus. Reproduction and growth of some plants include complicated pathways involving fungi, insects and various nutrients, with all elements required for the plant to multiply and prosper. The photography they showed was amazing.
Pollution hits fungi that nourish trees
By Helen Briggs BBC News 6 June 2018
Scientists are warning that pollution could be starving Europe’s trees of vital nutrients by damaging essential fungi. The fungi live on the roots of trees, supplying them with minerals and water…
Read more here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44382889
Scaly Phebalium

Phebalium squamulosum is widespread along the east coast of Australia growing from coast to mountains.
Of the 10 subspecies of this plant, the most common subspecies is squamulosum. The individual cream to pale yellow terminal flowers are five-petalled and relatively small, but as they occur in clusters they are very conspicuous. The narrow oblong leaves are up to 5 cm long and are shiny on top and a paler silvery/rusty colour underneath. They appear to be a reliable and fairly tough plant once established.
P. squarmlosum grows to about 2m high by 2m wide. Although mulch is advised it appears to need little watering after establishment in the first year.
Phlebalium – from the Greek philbaleo, a kind of fig
squamulosum – scaly, referring to the small browny scales on the branches, underside of the leaves and flower stalks.
Acacia parramattensis – Sydney Green Wattle

Acacia parramattensis, commonly known as Parramatta wattle or Sydney Green Wattle, is a tree of the family Fabaceae native to the Blue Mountains and surrounding regions of New South Wales.

It is a tall shrub or tree to a b o u t 1 5 m (50 ft) in height with finely divided bipinnate leaves and yellow flowers that appear over summer. It generally grows in woodland or dry sclerophyll forest on alluvial or shale- based soils, generally with some clay content.
Acacia parramattensis is found in the Sydney Basin and Blue Mountains in central New South Wales, north to Yengo National Park, west to Grenfell and south to Tumut, from sea level to elevations of 900 metres.
A component of dry sclerophyll forest or woodland, it is found in association with such trees as forest red gum (Eucalyptus tereticornis), Sydney blue gum (E. saligna), mountain white gum (E. dalrympleana), rough-barked apple (Angophora floribunda), turpentine (Syncarpia glomulifera), or in drier locations with gossamer wattle (Acacia floribunda), coast myall (A. binervia), or early green wattle (A. decurrens). A. parramattensis is also a component of the rare and fragmented Southern Highlands Shale Woodlands community.
It is fast growing and regenerates readily after bushfire, either by seed or suckering. It is often used in regeneration projects.
A. parramattensis tends to flower later in the year than the similar early green wattle (A. decurrens) and black wattle (A. mearnsii). The yellow flowers appear from November to February, occasionally as late as April. The yellow flowers are spherical and are arranged in panicles or racemes, with 25 to 50 flowers occurring in each flower head. Flowers are followed by the development of the flat grey-black seed pods. Rough and furry when young before losing their fur, they are 2.5–11 cm long and 3.5–8 mm wide and sub-moniliform—linear in shape and slightly swollen over the spaces where the seeds are. The mature seeds are released over November to January.
The seed is consumed by the common bronzewing (Phaps chalcoptera). The foliage serves as food for the caterpillars of the moonlight jewel (Hypochrysops delicia), imperial hairstreak (Jalmenus evagoras), amethyst hairstreak (Jalmenus icilius), Adult imperial hairstreak also visit the plant.
The wood serves as food for larvae of the jewel beetle species Melobasis nitidiventris, Agrilus hypoleucus and A. australasiae. Older trees that are infested by borers in turn attract the insectivorous yellow-tailed black cockatoo.
Vic Stockwell’s Puzzle

On the western side of Mount Bartle Frere, the tallest mountain in Queensland, grows a tree that shares an ancient link to Australia’s most dominant plant group.
To get there, you must find a track hidden by rainforest and then walk for around an hour up and down a dirt path, until you reach cathedral-like giant red barked trees. This is Stockwellia quadrifida, also known as “Vic Stockwell’s puzzle”: a close but anciently separated relative of the eucalypts.
This ancient tree is best suited for wetter and warmer environments, a throwback to when this continent was still connected to South America and Antarctica 40-50 million years ago, in the supercontinent Gondwana.
But this rare plant is now at risk by an introduced threat, myrtle rust, a plant disease that was accidentally introduced to Australia from South America.
Sister to the eucalypts
In my opinion, Stockwellia trees are in the same league as California Redwoods – they’re both old, with very few close living relatives. In fact, they are probably more special, as only around 400 Stockwellia trees remain.
Some of the trees I saw in Queensland have large buttressed roots and are hollowed out so you can walk inside the tree and stare upwards. Their bark is strikingly red, and their enormous size means you have to crane your neck to see the top.

Stockwellia takes its name from a Queensland forest ranger named Victor Stockwell who worked in the Boonjee area on Mount Bartle Frere where the trees grow. While the species wasn’t officially scientifically described until 2002, it had been known to botanists for many decades.
The trees were first identified using aerial photography. For Vic Stockwell, the tree was a “puzzle” because despite his vast experience in the forests of Far North Queensland, he was surprised to come across a species of tree he didn’t recognise.
Ancient rainforest groups
In the early 2000s, a DNA study found Stockwellia belonged to a group of rainforest trees called the “mesicalypts”, a name coined by my colleagues and I.
Mesicalypts are a sister group to Australian eucalypts, and are made up of four species of rainforest plants, including Stockwellia. Eucalypts, on the other hand, have more than 800 species growing all over Australia, in much drier conditions.
DNA results suggest there is also another evolutionary group in between mesicalypts and eucalypts which only grows in New Caledonia, a species called Arillastrum gummifera. We have informally named this single species group “newcalypt” – New Cal-(edonian) (eucal)-ypt – because we didn’t want to make it feel left out from getting a new informal name.
Puzzling history
Molecular dating of these groups revealed some even more enigmatic things about the divergence of the mesicalypts and the newcalypt from the eucalypts.
The sole New Caledonian species is estimated to have had a common ancestor with the eucalypts around 59 million years ago. This poses an interesting question. How did a plant that old end up on a land mass that we think is only 30 million years old?
We don’t really know yet, and botanists still debate about where it came from and how it got there.
Mesicalypts are also around 60 million years old and we estimate Stockwellia diverged from its nearest living relative around 30-40 million years ago. This was in an epoch called the late Eocene when the world was much wetter and warmer, and when Australia was still connected to South America and Antarctica.
With no fossil record of any ancient mesicalypts, it’s unclear how diverse and widespread they were back then. If we assume more species of mesicalypts once existed, then the ones we see today are the last living survivors from a very different past. Their history is also the tale of two different fortunes.
The mesicalypts are better suited to live in wetter and warmer environments, and their relatives – the eucalypts – are better suited to drier and hotter conditions.
When Gondwana finally split and Australia started drifting north, one group had to hang on as their suitable growing conditions began to shrink, while the other hit the jackpot and became the dominant vegetation of the continent.
An extinction threat
Once, the main threat to the small number of Stockwellia populations appeared to be only white cockatoos eating their seeds.
But now they are menaced by something more sinister than birds. More than a decade after the species was officially named, I was taken to see the Stockwellia by Stuart Worboys from the Australian Tropical Herbarium.
On this trip Stu found leaves of Stockwellia with myrtle rust on them – the first such recording for the tree. Myrtle rust is a disease of the Myrtaceae family, and was accidentally introduced from South America in the late 2000s. It attacks plant leaves, fruit and, in some cases, kills the plant outright.
The Australian Myrtaceae have had no time to adapt to myrtle rust. What is happening now could cause the extinction of some extremely unique Australian plants – including Stockwellia. It is sad to think a plant group that has hung on for so long, in a secluded part of Australia, minding its own business, now faces an introduced threat. The hunch is that the myrtle rust was introduced to Stockwellia from the shoes of one of its human visitors. Unfortunately, we may have loved the tree to death.
Let’s hope it’s tough enough to withstand the rust and live for many more millions of years. If it is lost, it would take with it 40 million years worth of evolutionary history in Myrtaceae. And after surviving so much tumultuous history of changing continental climates, cyclones, and everything else that a tropical environment could throw at it, that would be a very sad thing.
By Andrew Thornhill, Research botanist at the Botanic Gardens and State Herbarium of South Australia/ Environment Institute, University of Adelaide
From The Conversation, May 17 2019 – theconversation.com
My Plants and Climate Change
by Patrick Laher APS Armidale
The unusually hot Summer has provided the opportunity to observe how the plants in my garden are coping with drought and intense sunlight. The severe frost of 2018 eliminated some plants from my garden and this year, the heat and sun did the same. It has been a steep learning curve!

The plants most affected this year have been plants from the Rutaceae family and especially Correa reflexa forms, Crowea and Boronia. Plants from this group that received the sun most of the day, just didn’t survive, even with watering, whilst the same group of plants in shade or semi shade have so far survived. Correa glabra forms and hybrids have so far been unaffected.
I have found that Croweas and Boronias do not like summer water, especially once they have gone into drought mode. With the changing climate, I will try to plant out these species in the autumn and have them established before summer to avoid watering them.
Many plants are so far holding their own. I have been surprised with the hardiness of the Grevilleas, such as G. victoriae, lanigera and rosmarinifolia forms as well as G. iaspicula and many other species. Mallee Eucalytus plants such E. kybeanensis and gregsoniana are going alright as are Hovea lanceolata, Leionema elatius, Phebaium species, Lomatia and Callistemon.
The large shrubs such as Acacia floribunda and longifolia (Torrington form) do not seem to be affected by drought and intense sunlight and are continuing to put on new growth.
Ed. These are important observations that Patrick has made. What species have died on you during this summer? What has surprised you by thriving in the testing conditions? Make a note and let us all know for this knowledge will help us all in adjusting to the new conditions.

Parramatta and Hills District Group
SECRETARY: Caroline Franks
Email: apsparrahills@gmail.com