Ruud Kleinpaste: Spotting fungi

A week ago I noticed one of those beautiful red toadstools in our garden – the classic red fungus with white dots all over the skin.  

Amanita muscaria or Fly agaric – there are a few different sub-species with different colourations (orange-red to yellow, and various colours of the “dots”). This is a Mycorrhizal fungus that is associated with a few common host trees: Birch, beech and pine trees. It’s not very edible – in fact, it’s better not to muck around with. Some young children have ended up being poisoned and some rather risky adults (trying to go on a Hallucinogenic journey) ended up in similar troubles.  

But they look great, and this was the first time I saw this species in our front garden, which surprised me. Of course, I never saw the 7-meter tall Betula which really need pruning away from electricity wires…  

Many species are doing a great job in recycling dead materials, fallen leaves, and dead branches, and also dead trunks in all shapes and sizes.  

These are some examples of fungi doing the recycling job in forests – small and large and colourful. 

Ear Fungus is often found on dead trunks of trees.  

This is a weird looking, feeling, and tasting mushroom that can hardly be misidentified: It looks like a human ear, it feels like an ear, and it even tastes like an ear!  

This edible fungus was the very first export article that was sent from New Zealand to China in the eighteen hundreds. The Chew Chong brothers in Taranaki were the first people to send container loads of these fungi by ship.  

Gardeners will encounter fungi that cause all sorts of problems in fruit (fruit rots), in roots (Phytophthora), and in stems and on leaves. Often preventative gardening will reduce the problems developing. Copper sprays tend to protect a plant from Spores settling on the developing fruit.  

Brown Rot on Apricot 

What I love to see is interaction between fungi and insects. Here is a stinkhorn fungus with a decent amount of smelly, brown liquid. Flies are keen to harvest that brown stinky stuff and in doing so, they get the brown spores on their body. Those spores are distributed through gardens and forests.  

Autumn is the time to go for a walk and just look at fungi; I reckon they actually run this planet! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
They'd be.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Rude time past is our man in the garden.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
He's with us this morning, calder rude cure Jack. I
loved your intro mate. The way we are looking after
the planet house, you know, all that sort of stuff.
The species that we are, you know, it's just unbelievable.
You know. I sometimes thought, if all the species on
the planet could talk or think or communicate, how would

(00:39):
they look at Homo sapiens. Are we Well, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
That's the thing that'd be very complimentary somehow.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, there you go. So this this is so, this
is the whole thing. I quite often talk to kids
and teach just about it, about nature, literacy and all
this stuff, because if you really study the creatures. Now
we're going to be talking a little bit about fungy today,
but anyway, if you study fungi or by or whatever,
they run on current sunlight, not fossil sunlight, and every

(01:15):
and everything that they have is recycled.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah, that's a I mean, that seems like that's actually
a very good point.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah, no one's using and they with you exactly. And
also they work with an ecological system of cooperation, not
competition like all these bloody people in in in never Mind.
They operate on diversity too, and they use local expertise.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah, yeah, you're right.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
In the end. Yeah, and in the end, of course
they use life friendly chemistry, which I think is nice.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Well, this is why we love you, so it it's not
just philosophy is straying into political areas, which I love
as well. So I'm happy.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah, we need but we need to really think about that, Jack,
you know exactly what I mean. And seeing you're dead
now that is far more prevalent for you right now,
you know, with with your with your son and all. Anyway,
So I in our place, it's been very dry. The
sum has been very dry, but then of course we've
obviously had a lot of rain in.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
The last couple of weeks ago. And I have four
dinner plate sized mushrooms growing in my in the middle
of my lawn. They're white, they're just like dinner plates.
Very interesting, and you've got a whole range that might
be growing around the place at the moment.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yes, there is right, you know, this is actually a
fantastic year for mushrooms. I've noticed that over the last
few weeks. But last week I saw Amanita muscaria, which
is that famous red mushroom with the white dots. You know,
quite a large thing to see it in the lawns,
and I thought, ships I haven't seen that since, well

(03:03):
some weird for a long time, and why is it
growing in my garden? And then I looked up and
I saw the birch tree, and I thought, I never
I know I had a bird tree, but and I
know they are related. But this is how you get
these little cock So here you go. This is why
that creature is there, That that wonderful red thing is

(03:24):
related to working with beach and some other bloets and pieces. Uh,
it's it's it's a microizal fungus again that works with
other fungi and other trees, with the birch, the beach,
the pine and all that sort of stuff. That's exactly
what you say. So that's why I thought that fitted nicely.

(03:46):
And then there are a heck of a lot of
these things, and you probably see them on the on
the on the website of a whole lot of different
creatures that I call creatures almost They are funky, but
they do a fabulous job of recycling forests, leaves, branches,
everything that's so beautiful. There's a little picture there of

(04:07):
what they what they what we call the what you
call it the bird's nest fungus looks like a little
bird's nest, sits on a branch and has little spores
in it that look almost like coins. But it's tiny, tiny,
beautiful big.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
How big is that? How big is the bird's nest
the finger or something.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
And a half?

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah, right, okay, nothing, nothing, they're tiny.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
I like those fungus, those ones.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, yeah. I always have to tell kids, you know,
they look like an ear, they feel like an ear,
they smell like an ear, and they taste like an ear,
and they'll go hang on. In the eighteen hundreds, the
Chu Chung brothers in Taranaki were the first people to
send container loads of these ear fungi to China. That

(04:59):
was our very first material that we exported, is the
root overseas.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yes, that's amazing. I had no idea of it in
the eighteen hundreds.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
Yeah, early eighteen hundreds. Okay, there you go, oh, there
you are. And so you've got funky that that buggery
your plants I know, and your fruits and all this
sort of stuff. But here's the nice one, the last one,
the collaborative one, and it is the stinkhorn fungus with
brown material in that little red stinkhorn which is attracts
the flies and they slover it up and take the

(05:33):
spores to all over the forest. That is collaboration. Thank
you RhoD Photos on the website.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
News is Next on Newstalk Z'B. For more from Saturday
Morning with Jack Tame, Listen live to News Talks EDB
from nine am Saturday, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio