Puffballs and eyelash cups: searching for New Zealand ’s curious fungi

Growing interest in native fungi as enthusiasts across New Zealand hunt for the unusual specimens, from gilled oyster mushrooms to fleshy ‘brains’Get our weekend culture and lifestyle emailOne day the forest floor may be filled with leaf litter, soft decomposing logs and tiny tree saplings – the next, the logs flush with gilled oyster mushrooms, rivers of brightly coloured waxgills run along the ground, or puffballs – white orbs, as big as footballs, that suddenly appear in the undergrowth.Such is the curious world of New Zealand ’s fungi, which like the nation’s flora and fauna, have evolved in isolation into more than 20,000 unusual and endemic species. Most fungi are too small to be visible, and of those that you can see, most aren’t mushrooms – they’re lichen, moulds, mildews, rusts and smuts.Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best readsContinue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: New Zealand Foraging Fungi Biology Source Type: news